Starting value for a running balance report

[SharonGordon]

Hi all! Any advice would be really appreciated...

Say I have a checking-account like application: I have a transactions table that stores the withdrawals and deposits to the account. And let's say I have a summary field that gives me a running total for the account.

Then I would like implement the following process:

1) Allow the user to pick a year to report on.

2) Look up the starting balance for that year in a table.

3) Generate a report that adds the starting balance to the running total. More specifically, let's say the report shows the starting balance on January 1 of the chosen year then shows subtotals for every month.

I'm okay with steps 1) and 2), but I could use some suggestions for step 3): how do I pass the starting balance to the report in such a way that it is added to the running total once at the beginning of the report? (I'm okay with the grouping part of the report to show the monthly subtotals...I'm just not sure how to initially add in the starting balance.)

For annoying reasons, let's say I can't store the starting balance as a deposit transaction in the transactions table. And let's say that the table that stores the starting balance for this account also stores the starting balance for other accounts.

Phew!

Many thanks in advance!

Sharon

[comment]

Make your starting balance a global field. Add a calculation field =

gStartingBalance + sRunTotal

Place the calc field on the report layout, instead of the summary field.