> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.shovels.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# How Monthly EDL Deliveries Work

> Understand how Shovels delivers monthly data updates to EDL customers using the overwrite model while maintaining ID consistency.

For Enterprise Data License (EDL) customers, Shovels employs an **overwrite approach** when pushing data to your data warehouse.

## How It Works

Each monthly delivery is treated as a **fresh table**, completely replacing the previous month's data with the updated dataset.

### Benefits

This approach simplifies data management by:

* Eliminating the need to merge incremental updates
* Providing a complete, consistent dataset each delivery
* Avoiding complex change-tracking logic

## ID Stability

**Critically important:** Our IDs remain static and don't change from release to release:

* Permit IDs
* Address IDs
* Contractor IDs

This consistency ensures that any scripts, analyses, or processes relying on these IDs won't be impacted by the monthly refresh.

<Info>
  The stability of our ID system allows customers to build reliable data pipelines and maintain referential integrity.
</Info>

## What's Included

Each monthly delivery includes:

* All historical data
* New permits added since last delivery
* Updates to existing records (status changes, etc.)

This provides a complete and current view of the construction permitting landscape.

## Tracking Changes

For customers who need to track changes between deliveries, we recommend:

* Using the `first_seen_date` field to identify new records
* Comparing status change indicators between deliveries
* Maintaining a copy of previous deliveries for comparison

## Delivery Schedule

EDL data is refreshed on the same schedule as our main database:

* 1st of the month
* 15th of the month

## Related Articles

* [Record tracking](/docs/knowledge-base/edl/record-tracking)
* [EDL overview](/docs/knowledge-base/edl/overview)