need help defining relationships

[Brainiac58]

Happy New year all! I've read the whitepaper for novices and went through the FM help & am designing my first database on paper before I create it.

I have a table called ShiftSuper that contains the shift supervisors first name, last name and employment anniversary date. I want to be able to create a performance report for shift supervisors that will give them data on their performance in specific areas, such as overtime management. I have a table called OTMonitor that includes field such as pay period ending date, overtime worked by the shift supervisor department (as a whole) during the pay period and overtime worked by line staff for the payperiod. I also have a table for overtime worked by individual supervisors for the pay period called OTMonitorIndiv. It also has fields for payperiod ending, the supervisors first & last names and OT hours worked for the payperiod.

If I want to be able to generate a report for an individual supervisor that gives them data on their individual OT and OT for the supervisor & line staff departments would I create a relationship between my ShiftSuper table and both the OTMonitor & OTMonitorIndiv and then edit the relationship as shown in the FM Pro help example here http://www.filemaker.com/help/07-Related%20files9.html?

Would making portals from the 2 OT tables on the ShiftSuper report layout be the way I get the OT data to display on the supervisor report?

To search by a range of dates (like their evaluation period or by a specific quarter)on the ShiftSuper table do I have to add a special field(s)? From looking at the FM Pro help, it looks like I need to add a "StartingDate" & "EndingDate" field to my ShiftSuper table. Are these just date fields?

Any advice to help this newbie would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.