I've created a simple database of all expenses for every project with the ability to print expense reports on a project by project basis. Is it possible to lock individual records after initial data entry to prevent someone from changing original content without confirming their intention to do so? The concern is that expenses associated with a project will be missed if someone changes the project it is associated with.

Thanks for taking time to respond!

There are a number of techniques to lock a record. One of the easiest is to have two identical layouts: one for data entry and one for display.

My favorite technique is to have a field, lock. When when you want to modify the record, set lock to 0. When you want it locked, set it to 1. If you validation in the database schema, validate each field that you want locked to make sure that lock=0.

There are a few other ways, but the technique above works well.

Thanks for the suggestion. In a perfect world the original entry would be done without requesting confirmation but any other time an existing record was viewed and then changed it would require confirmation...

I'll experiment with duplicate layouts too.

I have a slightly different problem. I want to lock the record when I goto a layout, enter data and unlock the record when I leave the layout. Is this possible

Charlie, if you mean that you want to prevent more than one user from editing a record at the same time, Filemaker does this automatically.