Its quite complicated, so bare with me while I try to explain...

I'm working with three files; Jobs, Tests & Invoices.

You make a job and give it a report title, and in the process of making that job you make tests to be carried out in that job.

You finalise that job, then you invoice it. A job cannot be invoiced until it has been finalised.

Once it has been invoiced (which is just a series of flags being attached to various fields), it is able to be printed.

The Invoice file displays a list of all jobs that have been invoiced.

Here's where we start to get a bit tricky...

Once a job has been finalised or invoiced it can be unfinalised so that more tests can be added to that job.

But when that job is refinalised and invoiced again, the new test on that job get a new invoice number all to themselves, though they still belong to the old job.

So an Invoice can have multiple jobs on it, caused by mulitple tests from different jobs.

You can display the details of an invoice (on the Invoice file) showing client details and some extra printing options, etc. I want to be able to show through a portal one job number for each job in the invoice, the report title for each job in the invoice and the total $ value for all the test belonging to their own job number.

This is what I've got so far...

On the Test file I made:

Auto enter calculations operate when a record is created or when the fields on which the auto enter calculation is based are populated, if they are blank at record creation AND the box "do not evaluate" if fields are empty is checked (whew!).

To fix your problem, you can play a little game with FM. Create a new calculation field and define it as your formula combining Job Number and Invoice Number. Set this calculation field so that the result is blank until both fields are entered. Instead of defining the auto enter calculation as the combining formula, define it as this new calculations field. This will delay the auto enter the new calculation field is populated.

-bd