Layout to pull data from different tables based on selection

[Arno]

Hi There,

 I’m pretty new with using Filemaker, but still I built a solution that fits pretty all my needs (for now…)

I’m still experiencing one big problem with my solution for which I would need help.

Here’s the context : I run a little company. We receive financial reports every quarter.

All quarterly reports ( Excel file or csv file) have the exact same form.

I then created a layout based on the table created when importing the csv that works properly.

My need: as I’m to receive a new financial report on next quarters (Q12018, Q22018, Q32018 etc.), I would like to pull the new data from my Main layout.

Is there a way of having a layout pull the data from the new table (actually whatever table) to be created each time I’ll be importing a new Financial Report without getting rid of the original data (which I would like to keep in place, for obvious reasons)? Let’s say from a pull down?

Thank you very much for your help and don’t hesitate to get back to me if my explanations aren’t clear enough.

Edited December 13, 2017 by Arno

[Fitch]

You don't need a new layout or new tables. You should be importing the data to new records. Then you can simply do a Find to call up whatever quarter(s) you want to look at.

Welcome to the forums.

[Arno]

Many thanks for your answer.

Just to make sure I get it : I just import new data (from new quarter) in the main table. So I should add a field containing the quarter name so I can search by that field ?

Furthermore, as each quarter is about 40K lines (and keep growing), would there be a risk to "overload" the table at a certain point?

Thank you

[Mike-N-Tosh]

16 hours ago, Arno said:

I just import new data (from new quarter) in the main table. So I should add a field containing the quarter name so I can search by that field ?

Yes, that's what I would do. However without really knowing what is in the import (records & fields) it is quite difficult to say what will work best in your solution.

Typically a Quarterly financial report could have individual transactions along with sub-summary lines as well grand summary lines too. If that's the case, you may not want to do it this way. In fact doing it that way may actually hinder other reporting. For instance, what if you wanted to do a month report?

Having a data sample might be best to be able to get the best advice for your situation.

[Fitch]

If each record already has a date, that might be sufficient. Even if it does, it can be useful to have a field for the quarter and/or month and/or year. Depends on the kinds of reports you want to produce.

As Mike said, it's hard to say without seeing a data sample, but 200k records a year is not unusual for a FileMaker solution. After 10 years you'll have 2 million records, and that should be fine. If things start to slow down you can explore archiving or data warehousing options.