What are Regulatory Limits and how do I use them?

Regulatory Limits let you compare the incoming data to one or more currently selected regulatory limits to see if any of your data exceed regulatory standards. Of course, you will have to have entered (or imported) the regulatory limits that you want to compare to. Depending on the report, you may apply up to 12 regulatory limits to your data. Where you wish to compare one of more set of limits, you have to setup Regulatory Limit groups for the limits you have entered.

In Enviro Data you can enter the limits into the program, or import them from a spreadsheet file, which may be easier, especially if you have them in digital form.

There are two parts to setting up the limits - creating the limit types and entering the limits.

From the EDITOR, click on Manage Lookups in the Setup group and click on Reg. Limit Types.

Regulatory Limit Types form

This will bring up the REGULATORY LIMIT TYPES form where you can add the regulatory limit type that you will be adding limits for. You can also set several options for how the limit will be displayed when a limit is exceeded. These include any permit options, whether you  wish to display an exceedance when the result is at or exceeding the regulatory limit, the report order that will be used for various limit types, the background color when a limit is exceeded and various font options.

For example, you could enter “FA” for the Reg. Limit Type Code, and “Factory” for the Regulatory Limit Type. Then click on Close. Fill out the ACTIVITY LOG and click on Done. Close the MANAGE LOOKUPS form.

Now that we have entered the limit type we can import the limits.

Enviro Data comes with spreadsheet files that make it easy to import your limits. ImportRegLimits.xls is an empty file in this format, and ImportRegLimitsExample8.xls contains some example data. Fields in red font are required fields. Of course, the RegTypeCode and RegType must be the same as you entered above. 

import reg limit spreadsheet example

Open the ImportRegLimits8.xls file and enter some limit data. Save the file under a new name, and close Excel.

Select Import Data from the EDITOR Import / Edit section. This will open the form seen below.

Select “Reg Limits Import” from the dropdown box under File type and format. Use the Select button to browse for and select the file you created.

reg limit import wizard

The remaining options in the Import Wizard apply only to analytical data import, so we don’t need to go through them.

Click on Finish to proceed with the import, then OK. You will see a popup telling you how many limits were imported.

You don’t have to import the limits before you import your samples and analyses. In fact, you don’t need limits at all unless you want to use them in your retrievals.

For a better understanding of Regulatory Limits and Regulatory Limit Groups we recommend you see the section on Regulatory Limits in Appendix B - Import Formats of the Documentation. 

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