Logging Actuals From the Planner in EDGEBIC

In EDGEBIC by User Solutions, the Log Actuals dialog is the planner-side path for recording what really happened on an operation: its real start, the hours and pieces worked each day, and its real end. It is the counterpart to the shop-floor kiosk, and it captures exactly the same actuals into exactly the same model. If your plant runs kiosk terminals, operators punch the data in. If it does not, or if a supervisor needs to enter or correct a day from the office, the Log Actuals dialog does the whole job. This is shop floor data collection driven from the planner rather than the machine.

Actuals are facts, kept strictly separate from the plan. The scheduled dates are never overwritten by what you log, so every screen and report can compare plan against reality. This article walks the dialog end to end so you know what each field writes and what happens when you save.

Opening the Dialog

There are three ways in, and they all reach the same place.

• From the Schedule View Gantt: right-click the operation's bar and choose Log Actuals.
• From the Job View tab: click the Log Actual header button and pick the work center that did the work.
• From the Actual Live view: double-click the step's progress card.

Actuals are logged per operation, meaning per work center, per day. So before you open the dialog you need to know which work center actually ran the step. If the operation has no actual start yet, the Edit Actual Dates dialog opens first.

Setting the Actual Start

An operation is not "in progress" until it has an actual start. In Edit Actual Dates you set Actual Start with one tap: Start = Now stamps the current moment, or Use Sched Start copies the planned start when the work truly began on time. An actual start is written once. If an operator later punches in at the kiosk, the kiosk will not overwrite a start you already recorded, and the reverse is true too.

If earlier operations in the same job have no actuals yet, a Batch Scheduling prompt appears: "Warning! No actual dates logged to prior workcenters!" It lists the missing work centers and explains that continuing will auto-log their planned values as actuals, tagged as system auto-filled. You have a clean choice. Cancel stops so you can log the earlier steps properly, which is the honest path. OK accepts the backfill and continues, and the backfilled days wear a badge so they stay recognizable for later review.

The Daily Hours Grid

With the actual start set, the Log Actuals grid opens. It has one row per calendar day of the operation's window.

Leave Auto Calc Hours ticked to type just one side. Enter 6 in Actual Hrs and the pieces fill in from the rate, or enter the pieces and the hours derive. The rate comes from the routing step and the work center, and it is the same effective rate the kiosk uses, so a day logged from the planner and a day punched at the machine convert identically. For the full conversion mechanics, see how hours and pieces convert on the floor.

Any day showing the auto-filled badge holds a value the system guessed from plan. Edit it to replace the guess with reality, and the badge disappears the moment you change the value: that day is now a normal hand-entered day.

Saving, Reasons, and History

Click Save and the day values persist. Two things guard the record. First, if you changed values that had been reported before, EDGEBIC asks for a reason, which is stored in the logging history for audit. An empty reason cancels the save rather than silently overwriting. Second, the same prior-work-center prompt can appear here too, plus a prior-days variant if earlier days of this same operation are still empty.

Use View History to see every past entry and edit, with who, when, the old value, the new value, and the reason. History is append-only, so corrections are added, never erased. Use Log Actual Dates to adjust the operation's actual start and end from inside the dialog.

For a one-cell correction you do not need the full dialog at all: double-click the Actual Hours or Actual Pieces cell of an operation row in the Job View grid to open the Quick Log popup, with Date, Hours, Pieces, an Auto-calc toggle, and Save.

Marking the Operation Complete

Logging hours does not close an operation. Completion is explicit. Double-click the operation's Actual End cell in the Job View grid and set the end with End = Now or Use Sched End, then save. EDGEBIC refuses an actual end that is not after the actual start: an inverted pair is always a data-entry error, and the save is blocked with a clear message.

When you record completion without an explicit end time, EDGEBIC snaps the actual end to the end of the last day that has logged hours, meaning 23:59 of that day. That is why a job started at 08:00 and completed the same day never ends up finished before it began. An operation also counts as done when its logged hours have fully covered the planned hours, even if no end was stamped.

What Saving Changes

Saving actuals ripples across the platform in a predictable way.

That last row is the whole point. Actuals are not bookkeeping after the fact, they steer the next scheduling run. Because completed work is immutable, the engine plans remaining work forward from reality, which is how a reschedule uses last night's actuals to keep every downstream promise honest.

The Bottom Line

The Log Actuals dialog gives a planner or supervisor full control over an operation's real dates, daily hours, and pieces without ever touching the plan. Set the actual start, type one side of the day grid and let the rate derive the other, give a reason on any change to a reported value, and stamp the end when the work is truly done. From there the same clean finite capacity scheduling loop that a kiosk feeds runs off your entries. See the whole cycle in the shop floor execution guide, or explore the platform at EDGEBIC.