I am programming a billing DB in FM 9 Adv. I now bill 30 different counties and to make a long story short, I have a billing layout for each. Naturally, each county dictates the billing form they will accept so I can't use just one... but I digress, there are simply 30 different billing forms and each client is associated from one county.

The data entry layout has the billing info: the client, hours, date, etc. and WHICH county to bill, and the 30 are on a drop down list.

I would like to have a function that will take me from the data entry screen to the corresponding billing layout for the given county. I suppose I could put 30 tiny buttons on the data entry screen but that's a bit crude but writing a gigantic IF statement also seems to be somewhat clumsy.

It seems to me there must be another way. I would appreciate any suggestions. Thanks.

With version 11 this is easy to do, you just need to perform a script trigger to go to the related layout.

I use 11, I don’t know if there is this tool in version 9, but I read there is a plugin to run script trigger in old filemaker.

I suppose I could put 30 tiny buttons on the data entry screen

You only need one. Set it to Go to Layout [ Layout Name by calculation… ]. Then calculate the layout's name (or number) from the selected county field.

If you have a table of Counties (which you probably should have) you can store the layout's name or number there, then get it through the relationship that will be established when you select the county to bill.