Dollar Year & Data Year

INTRODUCTION:

Dollar Year. Data Year. Song of the Year. Year of the Rat. Wonder Years. There are a lot of years to keep track of. This article will help you understand at least two of them.

DOLLAR YEAR:

Dollar Year is the year represented by the values in your Event.  This is usually (but not always) the same as the year in which your event occurred or is expected to occur. 

IMPACTS SCREEN

On the Impacts screen, Dollar Year should be the year of the data you are inputting. 

RESULTS SCREEN

On the Results screen, Dollar Year shows the year of the value of the economic indicators - the year of what you want your results to show.

For an example of when Dollar Year on the Impacts screen will not be the year in which you event occurred, suppose you were borrowing a visitor expenditure pattern from a survey that was done in 2015.  But let’s say you want to use this data to estimate visitor spending in 2020. In this case, while the year of your event (that is, the year of the visits) is 2020, those dollars still represent 2015 dollars and must be characterized as such in order to generate correct results. By correctly telling IMPLAN that those values are 2015 values (by setting Dollar Year to 2015 on the Impacts screen), IMPLAN will know to inflate those values to the Data Year to ensure the correct values are applied to the multipliers.   

If you are setting up your event with an employment value instead of a dollar value (only recommended if you do not have a dollar value with which to start the set-up of your Event), Dollar Year should be set to the year in which that employment took place or is expected to take place.

Defining Dollar Year in the Impacts screen correctly is essential to getting accurate Results. On the other hand, how Dollar Year is defined in the Results screen is totally up to you and how you want to report your Results. If we want to report the effect of our 2020 visitors is 2020 dollars, we simply need to ensure the Dollar Year in the Results screen is filtered to 2020. Dollar Year in the Results screen will default to the current year. Remember, dollars can only be summed or compared when in like Dollar Years.

DATA YEAR:

Data Year is the year of the dataset that you are utilizing. Currently, IMPLAN has datasets for 2012-2018. If you are analyzing an event that occurred prior to 2012, we recommend setting your Data Year to 2012.  If you are analyzing an event that occurred from 2012-2017, we recommend using the Data Year that matches your data. If you are modeling something that occurred in the current year or is expected to happen in the future, we recommend using the most current dataset, 2018.

The Regions screen will show you data from 2018. To access datasets from 2015, 2016, and 2017 or 2012, 2013, and 2014, start your analysis from the Projects screen and click New Project in the upper right.

For 2012 - 2014 Data Years

Give your project a name and then under Industry Set choose US - 536 Sectors and Household Set choose Set 2 - 2014 Datasets or earlier.  Once you've created the Project you will have access to the datasets from 2012-2014 in the drop-down menu at the top of the Regions screen (where you will be automatically redirected).

 

For 2015 - 2017 Data Years

Give your project a name and then under Industry Set choose US - 536 Sectors and Household Set choose Set 1 - 2015 Datasets or later. Once you've created the Project you will have access to the datasets from 2015-2017 in the drop-down menu at the top of the Regions screen (where you will be automatically redirected).

 

For 2018 Data Year

Give your project a name and then under Industry Set choose US - 546 Sectors and Household Set choose Set 1 - 2015 Datasets or later.  This will give you access to the 2018 dataset.

Written November 20, 2019