Running total

[DigitalDreamer]

Hello everyone im new to the forum and new to filemaker. I have been using filemaker pro 5.5 now for about a week and i have learned a great deal just reading the filemaker manual and some from the posts here. I spent over 4 hours on here one day and took in as much as i could. You guys do a great job.

I have a question about a database i am building. Its somewhat of a simple database. Its a database that simply tracks members of a private club. In the base i have fields for personal information about the member(s) and a few payment option fields. Where i am having problems is in the Amount to date field. I have a field for Amount they pay for there dues per year called Amount paid. And i want to make a field that keeps a running total of what all they have paid since they have been a member. I made a field called Amount to Date and made it a summary field and told it to do a running total of the amount paid. But what happens is whatever i put in the amount paid field goes to the total to date field but doesnt add it up. So if i go to amount paid and put in $7.00 it puts in $7.00 in the amount to date field thats fine except if i go back to the same member and add another $7.00 the amount to date stays at $7.00 not $14.00.

I know this is a long example but i didnt wanna leave anything out. Thanks for any help you can give and keep up the good work.

Dave

[CobaltSky]

Hello Dave,

The running total facility using a summary field works by adding values it finds in the target field in successive records throughout the database.

If I understand you right, each member in your database is on a separate record - in which case, the running balance would be adding up a single payment by 'member A' along with a corresponding single payment made by 'member B' and then a single payment by 'member C' and so on. Whereas what you are looking for is a running balance of 'payment 1', 'payment 2' and 'payment 3' by 'member A'.

This being the case, an alternative approach you could consider is creating a related file for payments, in which each payment gets a new separate record, and the records are tied back to the member record in your membership file via the relationship (eg a memberID field in both files) You will then be able to establish your running balance in the payments file, which will display the data you are looking for whenever you perform a 'find' to view the payments for a particular member.

If you're still having trouble with this and want to see a running balance in action, there is an example included in a rather more complex 'Calculate Down' demo file available as a free download from the following URL:

http://www.nightwing.com.au/FileMaker/demos/CalculateDown.zip

The file is designed to show how values can be passed dynamically from one record to the next throughout a file (ignore all that, because it's more complex than you need - or want to know about right now...) but it also includes a running balance column which is working as I've described above.

BTW, it sounds like you've had a very productive week!

Cheers,

[DigitalDreamer]

Thanks Ray that helps a great deal. I will check the link you posted and let you know how i come out. Have a good day.

[DigitalDreamer]

Ray it worked thanks for all your help. After studying the link you sent i finally got it. Thanks again your a life saver.