Hello from the world of FileMaker Pro 6.0!

I have a scripting challenge that I was hoping to get your advice on.

I need to create a report that shows our company's actual hourly rate,
summarized by client name, for any given period of time. This involves
a minimum of three files (expenses.fp5, invoices.fp5, and
timelog.fp5.) Each of these are related to a parent file (jobs.fp5).
This would be quite easy to do were it not for the time constraint.


It looks like I will end up needing to export records from each file
to CSVs, then import them into a different FMP file, and run the
report from there.

Does anyone have advice for how to accomplish this with the least
amount of pain? I've never had to script an import/export to FMP, but
it seems like it might not be the most efficient process.

Thanks.

Joseph

In article
<34de88e7-ff39-410c-9566-5399f0eb5d09 (AT) s6g2000vbc (DOT) googlegroups.com>,
"Joseph O'Brien" <obrien1984 (AT) hotmail (DOT) com> wrote:

You probably don't need to export / import records.

If the Jobs file has the approriate date field and is related to the other
files, then it's a fairly simple report to create.

A bit more information about how the "hourly rate" is calculated and the
data fields involved would be needed to give a detailed answer, but in
general terms:

- create a new field (or fields) in the Jobs file that totals
the appropriate fields from the related Expenses, Invoices
and Timelog fields,

- create a Summary field(s) to total these numbers,

- create a report Layout using Summary / Sub-summary Parts.

Then generating the report (which could be scripted to make it easier for
users) would just be a matter of:

- Find appropriately dated Jobs records,

- Sort the records by Client Name

- go to the report Layout

- print or Preview the report

Done.


Helpful Harry )

On Nov 28, 10:16*pm, yourn... (AT) yourisp (DOT) com (Your Name) wrote:
Thanks, Harry!

Unfortunately, I may not have given enough detail about the specifics
of our system that makes this a particularly difficult report.

In our company, a "job" may not have the same date as an invoice or
purchase order. A job might stay open for six months with POs and
invoices scattered throughout. We are interested in being able to
capture a monthly, quarterly, and yearly snapshot of our actual
billable rate. So, if we were to use the "jobs" file to run this
report, we would need to have some way to constrain related records by
date. I haven't found a way to do this in FMP6 yet. Is this possible?