Hello all,

I'm not very experienced with Filemaker so excuse me if this is a stupid question.

I'm creating a database that keeps count the amount of profit a client has made by following our stock market advice since the date they joined. I have a database that contains the details of the stock advised, and it includes the date advised and the profit or loss made. I have a 2nd database that contains the client information, name, address etc.

I need to have an alert when a client makes a certain amount of profit. I'm OK with everything except, I don't know how to calculate the runing total of profit/loss SINCE, the client joined.

Help would very appreciated

Thanks

if you dont alerady have, make a relationship from your customer database to your order database matching the customer id with the customer id. then make a calculated field inside your customer database and the contents should look like this SUM (order::profit). this gives you all the profit you ever made with a customer. now if you want an actual alert in form of a popup, you will have to refer to plugins to do this for you. in general many people advise against the use of plugins if you can, so rather try to use filemakers inbuild abilities to help you. if i would want to know when a customer makes over a certain amount of profit:

1. modify the calculation so that it becomes red as soon the profit is over a certain level, then sort the profit field ascending in a list view.

2. make an extra field which turns to 1 if the profit is higher than a certain level, then have a script find those ones for you.

another concern is that when you have a lot of customers and a lot of orders, the calculated sum field for the profit can become slow. i think in general it would be better to make an extra report layout, which shows you all the customers over a certain amount of profit (use a field which turns to 1 again) and then print it out ones a week. dont show the field on your main layout.