LineItems subtotal in Invoice Header

[Mike Konoff]

I have read the article at learn alpha.com on how to save an invoice total to a table field in an invoice header by pressing a button. But that's too much work since we are users of Alpha Four V6 for many years in in there is can happen automatically.

From within a set A4 can directly reference a child field from a parent, and vica versa. This parent/child "referencing", I heard, is supposed to return in A5-V5. Another useful feature of A4-V6 is the ability to make a field in the parent "summarize" a field in related child, such as the invc->subtotal "automatically" summarizing the invcline->lintot fields of all related child records.

Will this be coming back to A5-V5 also???????

If not, is there any way for this to happen automatically. I've addressed this one in the past, but can't seem to find the old messages.

Thanks for your help in advance.

Have a good weekend everybody!!! (tho short)

Kindest regards,
Mike

[csda1]

RE: LineItems subtotal in Invoice Header

Mike,

Use LOOKUPC() and LOOKUP() to reference fields from a child table (or any table for that matter) in the parent's field rules.

Use DBCOUNT(), DBSUM() TABLECOUNT() etc to do summaries from the child in a similar way. Be careful of those parameters requiring expressions given as character fields (like SUBTOTAL+TAX vs "SUBTOTAL+TAX")

Regards,

Ira J. Perlow
Computer Systems Design & Associates
[email protected]

[Mike Konoff]

RE: LineItems subtotal in Invoice Header

If I place that function in a new calculated field on the form, it works. However, If I place that function in the field rules for the SUBTOTAL, then it doesn't work. If I change the value in any field in the parent table, then the field SUBTOTAL re-evaluates to the correct value.

Question: What needs to be done to capture the SUBTOTAL of all line itmes in an invoice...automatically.

Thanks,
Mike

[csda1]

RE: LineItems subtotal in Invoice Header

Mike,

You could add a posting rule of the child to post the data to the parent record any time the child is changed. You could also have an ONSAVE event code to do a similar function and then refresh the parent.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Ira J. Perlow
Computer Systems Design & Associates
[email protected]

[Mike Konoff]

RE: LineItems subtotal in Invoice Header

Ira,

Well, my problem is that I'm no knowledge on working with ONSAVE events, but would probably be a good idea to learn.

However, if the feature that is in A4 is coming to A5 that would allow one to set a field to "summary" when in a set, this wouldn't be necessary.

Thanks,
Mike

[Mike Konoff]

RE: LineItems subtotal in Invoice Header

I dug through old posts and found an old message thread, from none other than myself on the same subject, regarding the same situation.

It was suggested to me to put the following on a buttons OnPress...

t=table.current()
t.change_begin()
t.change_end(.t.)

I tried placing this on the OnSave event, but only worked if a field in the parent was changed, then saved. Which is the same way it worked before I added this.

I took a look at the browse and found and OnDepart event. I added this to the OnDepart event and it updates the parent field SUBTOTAL every time I press F6 to exit the browse.

My only concern here is if someone is entering an invoice and they don't exit the browse...then subtotal might not be saved as needed.

Thanks,
Mike

[Tom Cone Jr]

RE: LineItems subtotal in Invoice Header

Mike, instead of trying to come up with an expression which scans all related child records and subtotals them each time a line item changes...

I recommend you follow Ira's advice and use set a field rule on the field in your child table which shows the total for a single line item. Using the techniquest outlined at pg 81 of the User's guide, you can have Alpha Five automatically Add the current line item total to the invoice subtotal field in your header table. The disk access will be much less and speed should be improved. The invoice total (subtotal) field in your header table would have the current total of all related child records. Should work great.

-- tom