Sliding / disappearing lines in a print out

[Slater]

Hi All,

I'm trying to use FM to output invoices of mine, and i'd like to be able to have lines in the invoice excluded if there's nothing in a particular field. For example, the report would show something like:

Days worked: xx at rate: yy totals: zz

It would show this if x was a value, but if there was nothing in x (ie no work had been done) then the whole line would dissapear. Is this possible?

I'm thinking that i have to got to do this with a calculated result, ie

LINE1 =

if NUMBER DAYS >=1 ;

"Days worked: " & NUMBER_DAYS & " at rate: " & RATE etc ;

""

This being the case, how would i format the info in the calculation - for example if there is a date in it, how could i turn 4/2/2009 into Thurs 4th Jan '09, or if i have a number, how can i limit the number of digits shown, ie show 9.95 instead of 9.94857463?

Or is there a more simple way!

Cheers,

Slater

Edited February 5, 2009 by Guest

[comment]

Why don't you simply omit them from the found set?

[Slater]

Why don't you simply omit them from the found set?

I'm not getting to the information via a find - each job has it's own list of potential things i might invoice for, with them all as individual fields within the JOB file. When i'm invoicing, i just check boxes and fill in amounts.

ie

JOB::ASSISTANT_RATE

JOB::ASSISTANT_HOURS

JOB::EXTRA_PRINTS

JOB::EXTRA_PRINTS_PRICE_PER_PRINT

On some jobs i might use an assistant, and on others i might not. Or i might bill them for extra prints - but not always.

So i wanted to print the invoice where the line only shows up if there is an actual cost billed - if i'm not billing for an assistant i'd like it not the be there on the invoice (which is why simple sliding doesn't seem to work).

make sense?!

ps the calculation seems to be an ok solution - it's just v clumsy, uses lots of fields almost needlessly and i can't crack the formating issue (in my first post)

Cheers!

[comment]

The clumsy part is not using a related table for the items, IMHO. The rest is merely a symptom.

[Slater]

The clumsy part is not using a related table for the items, IMHO. The rest is merely a symptom.

I guess you're saying that all invoices have multiple costs, put them into a separate table and use a portal ... for my purposes, i'd find it harder to fill out invoices doing it this way. I'm ok with each invoice only having one print cost, just the one assistant or not, one quantity of my time etc. By doing it without a related table i can have a grid set up on the page, with everything in the same place, time after time, and it's easy for me to see if i'm missing anything by just going down the list, rather than having to add records to a portal table.

I don't know if i have justified the structure i've opted for in your eyes, probably not!. But the way i've set it up now seems to be working really well for me, except only when it comes to printing the client invoices.

Is there a better way to slide up / hide rows than the calculation method? Is there a way to format things within these calculations?

Many thanks for your time,

Slater

[comment]

You don't need to justify your structure to me. I'm just pointing out to you that your structure is the reason why you need to do a lot of work now. And it's nothing compared to what you will go through if, for example, you'll want a report of your income by type.

You can certainly have related items arranged in a fixed grid. If there are only a few types, you could simply use a series of single-row portals, with the underlying relationships filtered by type. A better alternative, which I won't go into now, would be to use a left outer join. Another option (which I don't particularly like, but it does work) is to import a set of empty items every time a new job is created.

Is there a better way to slide up / hide rows than the calculation method?

Not that I know of.

Is there a way to format things within these calculations?

Yes. For example, to format a date as "Thursday, January 4 2009":

DayName ( date ) & ", " & MonthName ( date ) & " " & Day ( date ) & " " & Year ( date )

If you search the forums you'll find many threads dealing with manual formatting of numbers as currency.

[Slater]

your structure is the reason why you need to do a lot of work now. And it's nothing compared to what you will go through if, for example, you'll want a report of your income by type.

Yeah - the more i think of it, the more i'm coming round to what you suggest.

You can certainly have related items arranged in a fixed grid.

I had thought of a relationship with two join fields - when you add a new record, the second join field descriptor (ie "Assistant" or "Print") would be added, but as i'd got this far with the present structure i didn't mention it in my last post.

Thanks for the info regard formatting - it seems obvious now!

Much appreciated,

Slater

[Søren Dyhr]

By doing it without a related table i can have a grid set up on the page, with everything in the same place, time after time

By this you mean omitting a line here and there to make things arrange neatly in groupings? Perhaps these two thread's approaches could make you envision how this can be accomplished:

http://fmforums.com/forum/showtopic.php?tid/176396/tp/1/

http://fmforums.com/forum/showpost.php?post/297553/

(I do here suggest you read both threads thoroughly ....)

...because what you actually ditch by not heading for referential integrity is loosing the ability instantly to establish summaries - which BTW usually is my take on invoicing as well.

http://www.databasepros.com/FMPro?-DB=resources.fp5&-lay=cgi&-format=list.html&-FIND=+&resource_id=DBPros000717

Filemaker is obviously neither a spreadsheet nor a DTP tool at all such as Adobe Indesign. It seems like your task at hand both cheaper and easier could have been done via spreadsheet from OpenOffice and Scribus in a Linux distro, such as Ubuntu. Since the urge to make summaries on stock levels when it's hours of task's performance perhaps is a far fetch. I would BTW assume there still will be issue with the mac/aqua porting of Scribus:

http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/MacOSX_version_of_Scribus

--sd

[Slater]

Thanks SD,

I've had a chance to go through the links you suggested - thanks very helpful. I did in the end use the calc fields - set it up and it works perfectly (ie prints the invoice perfectly)

Cheers