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How to Import Leased Departments

What are Leased Departments?

Leased departments are any departments or concessions not owned by this firm that were operated within your establishment during 2002. They include any department operated by another firm that is normally considered by customers to be a part of your establishment, or if your establishment bills customers for sales of such departments. Departments operated by a subsidiary firm or the parent firm are also included. Leased departments do not include coin-operated amusement or vending machines operated by others.

Leased departments require special treatment in the importing process because the number of departments may vary from store to store.

Note three important details concerning leased departments:

1. Only selected forms have leased departments: the forms for department stores, warehouse clubs, and clothing stores (RT-45201, RT-45202, and RT-44801). Only Item 27B is affected.

2. Importing data for leased departments is an operation separate from importing data into the main portion of the survey.

3. Before you can import data for all leased departments in your stores, you must first create a record for each leased department in each store interactively in Surveyor.

A. Create a Record for Each Leased Department

Surveyor must know in advance how many records are to be imported. For stores with leased departments, this involves adding a record for each leased department for each store in Item 27.

1. Start Surveyor if you have not already. Choose Start | Programs | U.S. Census Bureau | Surveyor. Close the Welcome Screen.

2. From the Form Inbox, double click on the record for one store to bring up its form.

3. In the Navigation Panel, click on Item 27.

4. In Item 27A specify the number of leased departments for this store. (You may have already imported this number from your basic spreadsheet.)

5. In Item 27B, click the (plus sign) at the bottom of the page until the bar in the center reflects the same number of departments specified in 27A. You will be importing all of the other information requested on this form, so you do not need to fill in anything else interactively..

   

6. Select File | Close and confirm Yes that you want to save changes in the form.

7. Repeat steps 2 through 6 for all remaining stores.

B. Download the Spreadsheet Template

Because all forms with leased departments ask the questions the same way, you may download templatedept.xls and build your spreadsheet on that base. The template includes the first two rows below.

The first column is the Store/Plant identifier, shown on each record in the Form Inbox and correctable there. The same store number is repeated for each leased department at a given location. This example shows lines for three leased departments to be imported. The Sequence Index is placed in the second column. Note that it starts with ‘0’. Unlike the store number, which can be any unique character string, the Sequence Index must take the form 0, 1, 2, 3, etc.

Filling in the rest of the data is covered in Step D. below.

C. Download the Map Template

Surveyor needs a "map" to tell it which columns in your spreadsheet go with which items on the form. If you build your spreadsheet starting with the template templatedept.xls (above), you can download the complete map by right-clicking on this link templatedept.gmf, selecting Save Target As or Save Link Target As (depending on your browser), and saving the file to a location you will remember on your computer.

If you would prefer to create a new map for a spreadsheet you already have in a different format, see the instructions for creating a sequence map.

D. Fill in the Spreadsheet

1. Assign each separate line in the spreadsheet to a different department, and identify it by the unique store number AND the sequence index assigned to individual elements.

2. Cut and paste information from other spreadsheets into this spreadsheet.

3. Instructions for completing the "code" field are contained in Surveyor's help system, but may also be conveniently found on the web for department stores and warehouse clubs and for clothing stores.

4. On the sales figures, you may find it useful to add rows for totals to help you determine that leased department figures add to appropriate store subtotals or company-wide totals. As long as you leave the "Seq" column blank, the totals will not interfere with the importing of the other data.

5. Note that all sales are to be reported in thousands of dollars.

6. For the two yes or no questions, use the number "1" (not "x") as your check mark in the appropriate cell.

E. Import the Spreadsheet Data

1. From the Form Inbox, select Tools | Import...

2. Follow the instructions on the next two screens.

3. Enter the name of the spreadsheet file and the name of the map file.

   

4. The importing process will generate a log. Every line not matched will be noted, including the top rows normally devoted to field descriptions, which is not a problem. If the importing process identifies significant problems, click Cancel, modify your spreadsheet or map, and reimport. Otherwise, click Finish to save the results of the importing process. You can alway repeat the importing process, and all nonblank cells will overwrite information previously entered.

F. Review Your Work

Review the data in Surveyor for at least selected stores to confirm that the right data were imported into each location on the form. Use File | Print to review a form in hard copy.

If you have only a few corrections, you may make them interactively in Surveyor by double-clicking on the line for the store and entering revisions in the report form. You may, however, prefer to change the data in your spreadsheet, then import the data again. All data in nonblank cells in mapped fields will overwrite data previously entered in Surveyor. Because imported blank cells do not overwrite data already in Surveyor, enter zero or other nonblank response if you need to wipe out a previously entered cell.

When review is complete, and provided the data in the basic forms are complete as well, submit the forms with Tools | Submit Responses …

Thank you.

If you have any problems or comments on these instructions, contact us via our e-mail page (new window).

Return to the general Importing Data from Your Spreadsheet.