Summary accounts, as their name implies, summarize individual block level attributes from a number of blocks to provide a broader picture of overall condition. For example, a summary account might represent the growing stock (or standing volume) of the whole forest. Obviously, stand level growing stock will change over time as stands grow, and the value of the aggregate, or summary growing stock account will also change over time.

Summary accounts are usually defined by records contained in the accounts.csv data file. ^[5] This file consists of four fields: GROUP, ATTRIBUTE, ACCOUNT and SUM.

GROUP,ATTRIBUTE,ACCOUNT,SUM 
...
_ALL_,feature.Yield.managed.Conif,feature.Yield.managed.Conif,1
_ALL_,feature.Yield.managed.Decid,feature.Yield.managed.Decid,1 
_ALL_,product.Yield.managed.Conif,product.Yield.managed.Conif,1 
_ALL_,product.Yield.managed.Decid,product.Yield.managed.Decid,1 
...
      

The value in the GROUP field identifies the set of blocks that are to be included in this account. The value in the ATTRIBUTE field states the name of the attribute that contributes to the account. The value in the ACCOUNT field states the name of the account that the values will be summed to. The value in the SUM field can be specified as a floating point number that will be used to scale attribute values prior to adding in to the account. If you do not want to scale the values, use a value of 1.

	Tip
	All blocks automatically belong to a special group named '_ALL_'. This is a Patchworks convention which means include every block. You may refer to the '_ALL_' group when you want to reference all blocks in the forest. Groups are explained further in the section called “Group Summary Accounts”