I'm working on a smallish database for taking inventories of various types of items. This is mostly just for my own use, both for convenience and for more practice with FileMaker Pro.

Anyway, I have a number of tables created, with each table storing a specific category of item- one is for books, another for videos, etc. I went with separate tables since there are only a few common fields between the different tables. I have a single layout for each table for data entry and searching. Eventually, I'll likely add different layouts for doing different tasks. Anyway, what I'd like to create is a layout that lists the total cost of items on a single layout. For example, I'd like to show the total cost of books, the total cost of videos, and then a sum of the two. I don't want any other information visible (for now). It seems like I need to set up a number of relationships in order to do this, but I'm at a loss of how to structure these relationships. Can anyone give me some pointers as to how to go about this? Thanks!

Might be better to have only one table, even if fields are not in common, if you wish to display the data in a common area at some point. For the fields that are not in common, give them a generic name in define fields and a specific name on the layout for entering the data. Give each record and identifier if it is a book, video... to allow sorting for type of asset. Use summary fields to add up cost and you are done.

I had thought about doing that, but some categories have a lot more fields than others, and I was hoping to avoid having lots of non-applicable fields on many layouts.

I was wondering, though, that maybe creating another table, and having that table be related to all of the others might be the way to go. I could create fields in this new table for each categories summary fields, and then just add fields in the future if I happen to create any new categories....