Any help would be greatly appreciated

January 9, 200521 yr

Newbies

Hi All.

I am getting started with Filemaker Pro 6 and would like to know if someone can help me with a problem I am experiencing.

I have created a Job Tracking & Invoicing database for a existing client of mine.

There are 6 DB all up together.

DB 1 is the Main database

DB 2 is a DB for "Lump Items"

DB 3 is a DB for "Material items"

DB 4 is a DB for "Others"

DB 5 is a DB for "Less options"

DB 6 is the Invoice DB

How it currently works: I use the Main DB to create a new Job. With each job you can have 4 or more different categories to bill.

The Categories are:

Lumb

Material

Others

Less

That explains the other DB listed as above. With the Main DB I have 4 Layouts. Each layout reflecting one category. With each category, I created a portal with an relationship to each DB as listed above. My clients can then add as many Lump items, Material Items etc..

Would I would like to achieve is the following. I want to create a Invoice DB that pulls all these items together in a nice formatted way, starting with Lump Items and then Material Items and so on.

Format something like this:

Lump Item A $300

Lump Item B $125

Total for Lump Items $425

Material Item A $400

Material Item B $140

Material Item C $200

Total for Material Item $740

Others item A $412

Others item B $120

Total for Others item A $532

Less items A $-150

Total and so on.......

I know it is possible to this this with static portals/fields, but is there a way in Filemaker to do this dynamically. Why? Sometimes static portal might not have enough row or no data at all.

I am quite sure this is achievable, but I am not able to put my head together on this.

Any help or info would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance!

Regards,

Dan.

January 9, 200521 yr

I would put DB2, 3, 4 & 5 into one DB. Add a field for Category or Type to your Main DB. Make a calculated field Order Number Category = Order Numbe & " " & Category. Make a text field in new DB Order Number Category. Make Order Number and Category calculated fields from Order Number Category. Use Order Number Category as the key fields in the relationship between DB1 and new DB. Print your invoice from this new DB file.