I need to add more entries into a budget field for one record with an associated date and some comments. Do I need to create a separate database for budgets. Also, how can I go about getting the total budget to date?

How about describing a little more about what you are trying to do, what is a record in your file, what the fields are in a record.

Right now the question is kind of like "I need to do some stuff with budgets, how do I do this?"

-bd

It reads that way to me too! Sorry, I'm very rusty!

I'm trying to revise my database to include a scheduling or WIP database and am having trouble figuring out how to include budgets, budget increases, labour hours used, labour hours still left. Several different employees work on each project and I need to know how much of my budget is left while documenting everything.

Right now, I have the following databases: Work Order, Invoices, TSLI, Employees, Clients, and Pay Sheets.

So back to my original question. I have a budget field in the Work Order database. When the budget gets increased I want to be able to enter the increase, the date of the increase, and any notes. And then I need to create a Budget to Date calculation.

Also, how do I go about entering items from TSLI (ie. labour hours used) into the new database so I can keep track of hours left using the Budget to date.

The first item of importance is that you budget and track in the same way. If all that matters is total project hours budgeted vs. hours expended, the problem gets simple. If you budget by some subcategory of a project (work order or whatever), you will need to track this way.

If your budget amount consists of serveral components, an original budget plus increases, I would create a separate file "Budget Elements" and put the components of a total budget in it. Bring the totals over by project (work order?) from this file and from the TSLI file.

-bd