OK, I have muddled through this project so far putting together an entire client and staff admin database, and I am working on payroll functionality. I have a table used to record hours and dates worked. I have another related table to house employee information. these tables are related by a common employee ID number. I have set up a portal in the employee info table and I am trying to make a calculation to automatically break down total hours worked by month in a summary field for each respective month on the employee info table via the timecard portal. I do not want a running total, I want 12 subtotals one for each month. IE I want the hours worked in jan to be totaled in the jan summary field the ones worked in feb to be totaled in feb summary field and so on without having to limit the records displayed in the portal. I have thus far been unsuccessful in accomplishing a formula to discriminate info based on date from my portal does anybody have the knowledge to help me accomplish this?

Filemaker has no SUMIF function. There are several ways to achieve what you want: you could use a custom function, or define 12 relationships between employees and timecards (one for each month), or use a Months table with 12 permanent records between employees and timecards (this allows viewing only one employee at a time).

However, the best way is to produce a report from the timecards table, summarized by employee and by month.