What would be the best way to show discrepancy with Filemaker? If I'm over or under budget what would be the best way to format my calculations to show this?

i.e. if my calculation returns an over budget number

Take a look at this thread. It's on the lines of what you are looking for I believe.

Michael

Helpful but I still have questions. This discrepancy issue is a little more challenging then I expected it to be.

Now I have summaries of different areas of the budget, Estimated High, Estimated Low, Returned, and Actual. Although all this information appears on the same page I want to be able to run summaries of the actual costs against the estimated high to return a useful discrepancy. At the same time I want to run summaries for estimated high and returned (which are incomplete records).How do I get my actual to only calculate estimated high summaries on complete records. "If" calculations don't seem to be the answer, or maybe I'm just doing it wrong?

You could filter them off if certain fields are empty. You may want to look at SubSummary reports. Sounds more like what you are looking for. Using if's is still an option for finding records that exceeded values you were expecting.Or if they were below.

The ones that are not completed could be filtered off using a loop and a If IsEmpty/Omit record after the find script before going to the Subsummary report page.

Michael

Still banging my head against the desk... would it be worth generating two invisible fields? One being dependent on complete = "yes" and one being complete="no". So then the Returned = estimate - actual if complete = "no"

Is that even possible?

Try to think around what it is you want to achieve. Sometimes it can be overwelming until you get it broke down into simple terms.

First you are going to need a Order Status field. Whether it is a Drop down list with Yes and No as the choices or a unstored calc evealuating whether some fields are empty is your choice.

Second you need to be able to find the records where your estimated cost was less than your actual. This field can be an Unstored Calculation field with the following as the calculation.

If (GetAsNumber(Estimated) < GetAsNumber(Actual);"Not Good" ; "Good" )

Then it's just a matter of doing a find for "completed" in the Status field and in the same find search for "Not good" in the calc field above.

Let me know if this helps or I need to go into more detail.

Michael