Reading History Buckets: Actuals Versus Plan in EDGEBIC

EDGEBIC by User Solutions splits the inventory calendar at today: any bucket that ends before today is a history bucket and shows only what actually moved through the ledger, while every bucket from today forward shows the plan of scheduled receipts and demand, so the calendar reads the past truthfully and projects the future. Knowing which side of the today line a bucket sits on tells you whether you are looking at reality or at a prediction, and that distinction is what lets you compare the two.

This post explains how history buckets behave, why they ignore the plan, and how to use a past horizon start to check plan against reality. For the forward projection, see reading projected available balance across the horizon, and for the wider loop start from the EDGEBIC planning guide.

The Today Line

The inventory calendar is a row of planning buckets, each a day, a week, or a period. The critical boundary is today. A bucket that ends entirely before today is a history bucket. A bucket that includes today or lies ahead is a future bucket. The two are read by different rules.

A future bucket uses the plan. It adds scheduled receipts, the open build-to-stock orders due to complete, and subtracts gross requirements, the demand from forecast and firm orders. This is a projection: what the balance will be if the plan holds.

A history bucket uses reality. It looks only at the actual net movement, the signed sum of real ledger entries that posted in that bucket, and ignores forecast, firm demand, and scheduled receipts entirely. What happened, happened. The plan does not get to rewrite it.

Why History Ignores the Plan

The past is immutable, and the calendar honors that. A forecast for a week that has already passed is meaningless: either the demand materialized and posted to the ledger, or it did not. Reading a history bucket off the plan would show you what you expected, not what occurred. So EDGEBIC reads history off the ledger.

This has a clean consequence for the balance roll. Through history buckets, the projected balance walks forward using only actual net movement. It reflects the true path stock took to reach today. Then, at today's bucket, the roll switches to the planning model and begins projecting. The single running balance passes through the past truthfully and into the future as a forecast, with the handoff at the today line.

A Worked Example: Two Days of History, Three of Plan

Say you open the calendar with the horizon starting five days ago, to review what happened and where you stand. Two buckets are history; three are future. The opening balance is computed as of the horizon start: 250.

Inside the window, the ledger recorded two real movements:

The balance rolls through history on actuals only:

The two history buckets used the real +100 and -130. The future buckets switched to the plan and began subtracting forecast demand. Current on-hand is the full ledger sum, 250 plus 100 minus 130, which is 220, matching the balance at the today boundary.

Where a Missed Receipt Actually Shows

A common surprise: you set the horizon to start in the past, expecting to see a receipt in an old bucket, and it is not there. That is correct behavior, and it tells you something.

A history bucket shows only what actually happened. If a build-to-stock order was due in that past window but never completed, no receipt posted there, so the history bucket is honestly empty of it. The order is still open, so its receipt appears forward, in whatever bucket its current completion date now lands in, and if the order is overdue it may clamp into today's bucket. The receipt did not move to a future date because someone rescheduled it; it is drawn forward because the past reflects reality, and in reality the receipt has not happened yet.

So a missing past receipt is a diagnostic. It means a planned supply event slipped, and the calendar is refusing to pretend otherwise.

Reading Plan Against Reality

The reason to bring history onto the screen at all is comparison. Put a few history buckets next to the future ones and you can see what actually moved through inventory alongside what the plan now projects. Where actual demand ran hotter than the forecast, the history buckets show it. Where a planned receipt failed to land, its absence in the past and its presence forward tells the story.

This is how you calibrate. Forecast accuracy is invisible if you only ever look forward. Reading the recent past against what you had planned for it shows whether your forecasts and lead times hold up, and where they need adjusting.

One number stays anchored to the present through all of this. Current on-hand is always the full ledger sum up to now, and the promise math starts from that real figure, not from a past opening balance. So even when you scroll the horizon into history, the calendar keeps a firm grip on where you actually stand today.

Keeping the Split Useful

History buckets are truth; future buckets are plan. Use the split deliberately: look forward to decide what to build and buy, look back to check how well the plan has been matching reality. The today line is the seam, and reading both sides of it turns the calendar from a forecast into a feedback loop.

For how overdue orders behave at that seam, read why overdue orders pile into today's planning bucket, and for the ledger that history buckets read from, see why inventory transactions are append-only. For the calendar as a whole, read reading the inventory calendar and matrix.