Specifying a type in a summary? Or-how to do this?

[jschwarz]

I'm working on a fund-raising app for a non-profit group. They want to keep track of donations, pledges, etc. They've designed the DB, and I'm building it for them. However, on gift entry, there's one layout for gifts, no matter the type.

I have a menu for type: pledge, pledge payment, matching gift, etc.

I have a summary field on the gifts db that totals all the gifts by each person. So far, so good. However, if someone enters a pledge for $1000, then pays it off with two payments of $500, the total is going to show up as $2000... it counts every entry as contributing to the total.

What we really want is a way to have two totals: all money pledged, and all actually given so far. I come from an SQL background, and so the way I'd do it is have a summary of each type of gift... all pledges, all payments, etc, and then I could display those. Is there any way to do that in File Maker as my fields are setup, or will I have to create separate fields for payments and pledges?

I can clarify on the field setup more if needed.

Thanks.

[-Queue-]

If you have a type field, you could use two calculation fields

1. Case( type = "payment"; -1 * Amount ), for payments

2. Case( type = "pledge"; Amount ), for pledges

and create your summaries on these two fields.