Clone a scenario

Why clone a scenario

A saved scenario is frozen: once you select Save scenario, its figures, rates and rules never change. If costs have moved on since you last calculated for a house, cloning is the fastest way to redo the same setup with fresh numbers instead of rebuilding it from scratch. It re-runs last period’s calculation - same subsidy settings - against the house’s current participants and costs, without touching the scenario you’re cloning from.

Start the clone

Open the saved scenario you want to redo and select Clone as draft. SILWise takes you straight to that house’s live calculation page, with the fields already filled in from the scenario you cloned.

What carries over and what refreshes

Cloning copies four things from the original scenario into the new draft:

• The Calc date it was run for.
• The Provider rent contribution / FN amount.
• Any Subsidy % entries you had set for participants’ cost-centre shares.
• Any Subsidy % entries you had set for participants’ rent shares.

Everything else is worked out fresh. Rent, food, utilities and every other cost line are recalculated from the house’s costs as they stand right now, not copied from the frozen scenario. If a cost has changed since you last saved, the clone shows the new figure.

Because the Calc date carries over unchanged rather than jumping to today, check it before you save. Leave it if you’re deliberately matching the original period, or update it to today if you want the Centrelink rate version currently in effect. See Centrelink rates for how a calc date picks a rate version.

Cloning also replaces any unsaved draft you already had going for that house, so finish or save any other calculation in progress there first.

Review and save

The clone is a draft, not a new scenario. Nothing is recorded until you name it and select Save scenario yourself, exactly as with any other calculation - see save a scenario for the details, and run a calculation for how to work through the breakdown. Because it’s a draft, you can change anything before saving: swap the calc date, adjust a subsidy, edit the provider contribution.

Nothing about the original scenario changes at any point. It stays exactly as saved, still listed on the Scenarios page, no matter how many times you clone it.

Reissuing a schedule with updated branding

Cloning and saving is also how you reissue a schedule after changing your organisation’s branding. A saved scenario’s PDFs keep the letterhead they were created with, and there is no button that refreshes them in place, so open the scenario, select Clone as draft, and save it again.

Because a clone re-runs the calculation against the house as it is configured today, the numbers can change too if the house or its costs have changed since the original scenario - even though Centrelink rates stay pinned to the original calc date if you leave it unchanged. It is a re-run, not a reprint.

What you should see

After cloning, you land on the calculation page with a banner confirming your last session resumed, and every field already carrying the original’s calc date, provider contribution and subsidies. Once the breakdown resolves with no errors, type a new name in Scenario name and select Save scenario to turn it into its own record, separate from the one you cloned it from. For background on why scenarios lock in the way they do, see scenarios.