Introduction: The Stepped Rate From family is about applying a stepped rate of payment whose level is changing, to a timeperiod, ie working out how much is paid in that timeperiod, where the dates are the DATES FROM which each rate applies.
The basic function is FStep. It takes a range of AnnualRates and FromDates and applies them to the timeperiod. Other functions in the family differ as follows:
- Adding the ...Fcst... feature creates another function, FStepFcst. This function still requires a list of FromDates does not require a list of AnnualRates, because these are read off a forecast.
- Adding the ...Grow... feature gives rise to another function, FStepGrow. This function, as with the ...Fcst... ones above, requires a list of FromDates but not AnnualRates, because these are determined from an InitialAnnRate, to which is applied one or more percentages from the GrowthRates.
- FStepCombine is a versatile function that is capable of doing several FSteps and adding the results (rather like a Multi... function), but it goes a stage further and can multiply the results together, take the maximum, minimum etc, a bit like the Stepped Rate Revenue functions.
- Adding the ...Grow... feature in a more versatile way, and applying it to the AnnualRates, gives FStepGrowX, one of the newer functions in this family.
- All the functions in the Stepped Rate From family have clearly defined annual rates that apply to each step, or they mandatorily have to take annual rates from a forecast. For stepped rate functions either have a pre-defined stepped annual rate or have a default annual rate that comes from a forecast of annual rates, see the Stepped Rate Market family.
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