Clients in my business pay at the end of service, thus for most of time they are active, their account should show zero payments.

How can I get a calc field to display zero when there are no entries for the fields that are being calculated, in this case payments? I see in the "format number" area about zeros, but this seems to have no effect. Thanks all.

Try turning off the "Do not evaluate if all referenced field are empty" option under the formula box in the calc definition.

that didn't do it. Actually I need it evaluated, so how to get it to display zero from calc fields with no records? hmmm. The mystery continues.

1. You need it evaluated, that's why you need to turn it OFF. It's kind of confusing, and not the best UI possible.

2. What do you mean by "fields with no records"? I thought you meant no DATA in a record (or related records). Hopefully, there is a RECORD? Perhaps you should explain in more detail what the calculation is.

You should uncheck that box and you may want to change your calculation to:

"whatever the calculation is now" + 0

the +0 trick did it. Thanks. Since there are no payment records until the end of the project, most of the time the "Total Payments" just showed a blank, now it correctly shows a zero. I would think that would be a bug not to show a zero. For anyone else reading, I donated to this website today.