Complete Newbie needs your help...

January 31, 200322 yr

Newbies

Hello everyone -

I'm a complete newbie at FMPro - but I am an avid Mac user and like to try to do things myself. I'm setting up a small home-based business, and want to use FMPro for product lookup, invoices, customer lists and the like.

The first thing I did was take my product pricing from my distributor and import it into FM - so i can look up cost on a particular part number easily. That works well.

What I can't figure out is how take a field - say MSRP - and use that as a basis for two discount fields - one 15% off and one 10% off. All fields are defined right now as text.

Maybe I don't have the right book, but I'm not finding any answers. Can anyone help?

And thanks in advance, I'm going to have a ton of questions.

January 31, 200322 yr

Changing MSRP to a number field will make things easier.

your 10PercentDiscount field will be a calculation: = MSRP * .9

If you don't change your MSRP to a number field, the calculation will have to be

= TextToNum(MSRP) * .9

That should get you started.

February 2, 200322 yr

Quote:

> What I can't figure out is how take a field - say MSRP - and use that as a basis for

> two discount fields - one 15% off and one 10% off. All fields are defined right now as text.

Redefine MSRP to be a number fields. In layout mode, format the number, i.e., to always display two decimals (so a price of $12.50 won't display as 12.5).

Make two number fields called Fifteen and Ten (or whatever). Make these fields calculation fields. If they are already there, highlight them in Define Fields and click

calculation." A calc definition window will open, into which you enter:

Fifteen = MSRP * .85

Ten = MSRP * .9

Make sure the result in the calculation definition window (drop-down in lower part of window) is set to display result as "number" instead of "text."

Now you can stick the fields on your layout next to the MSRP field, making sure you format the numbers for two decimals, as you did for MSRP. Whenever a price is entered into MSRP (or imported), then your two new fields will display the two forms of discounts.

Steve Brown