Summarizing portal by description

[vinnymac]

I am a new user to FileMaker Pro, so please forgive the novice-type question. But I could use help from bigger brains than mine. I'll try to give plenty of details (maybe too much).

Background:

I built a project tracking database. It relates to "Project Line Items" db which I have placed in a portal window. Since I work on multiple projects each day I move from record to record inputting the time spent on each task for each project. I look up the task description and the hourly rate charges from another database called "Inventory". I probably have 30 or so task items there.

Overall everything works great.

The Challenge:

When a project is completed I need to make an invoice. But I don't want a laundry list of all the task details, only the total for each task.

For example, I work on Task A for 2 hours on Monday and Task B for 3 hours. On Tuesday I work 1 hour on Task C, 2 hours on Task A, one hour on Task B and so forth. I want my invoice to summarize each task and only to say "Task A --- total dollars. Next line "Task B--total dollars". Next line "Task C--total dollars", etc.

Plus I need the flexibility to add an item to the invoice that I didn't have on my project record (like if I had to purchase something for a client).

I created another portal in my invoice layout called "Invoice Line Items" which gives me great flexibility but then I have to manually input the totals for each task. That works OK too, but since this is a computer you'd think it can do the work for me?

Is there a way to capture the data from the Project Line Items portal, calculate the summaries for each task, and imbed that data into the Inventory Line Items portal? Or am I barking up the wrong tree here?

Hopefully I'm not overloading this description. I would appreciate any help.

Thanks in advance,

..

V

[ernst]

Hi Vin,

To summarise the lineitems for each project you would need to print from the lineitems database. See the attached example for a brief description on how to do that.

To add extra non-task-lines to an invoice seems no problem to me; it's just a different 'product' that you sell to your customers, so you could add those lines through another portal that shows different fields from your lineitems database.

Success and best regards,

Ernst.

summarise.fp5.zip

[vinnymac]

Thanks Ernst!

It makes perfect sense to use the line item database for the summaries. It seemed I was trying to do too much from the main database.

During my trial-and-errors, I did briefly wander down that path but couldn't figure out why I couldn't see the summaries. With your example I realized that I have to be in preview mode to see it all and not browse. Now everything is coming together.

Thanks again for your help and your example!

..

V