Thread: Having difficulties thinking of a Summary function/Plan

Ok, so I'm stuck in a project for work.
I have created an excel workbook to hold all job details for one of the electricians employed here. So, I created a template, which I open up as a new worksheet within this book when a new job is started.

So, each of these sheets holds the individual job information such as:

Labour:

Date - Hours - Rate Per Hour - Total Per Day
10/06/09 4 £25 £100

Materials:

Date SupplierName Amount
10/06/09 - Supplier name - £40


So on and so forth....

Ok, now my problem is, I would like a summary sheet within the same workbook as all the jobs.

I would like my summary sheet to show ALL the totals of the different things such as labour hours, labour pay, materials used..etc.

Like

Labour - HOURS
Current - 1 Month - 2 Month - 3 Month - Previous


What I would like to happen is when I type into the individual job sheet, I would like these totals to automatically add themselves to the summary sheet. And then as times goes on, current would move to 1 month, 1 month move to 2 month...etc.

I know it's a massive complicated job...

Anyone happen to have ANY ideas??? (In layman's terms!)

Hi Shiona,

I think I understand what you're after, but you'd greatly help by posting a sample workbook, so there are no guesses about the data layout. Can you post a workbook with three to four job sheets containing sample data and the summary sheet laid out as you want it, indicating where on the summary sheet you'd like what data from the job sheets summarized.

I'm not too clear on what you mean by

current would move to 1 month, 1 month move to 2 month...etc.

Can you explain this a bit more, please? I (think I) know what you want for "current" but why "1 month" and "2 months"? Is that as in "1 month before", "2 months before" the current month, etc?

Will any single job sheet span more than one month? Will several job sheets have entries for the same month? I assume that one workbook is for one person only? Do they start one job, work only on that job, and finish it before they start another job? Or do they have several jobs going on at the same time?

On the summary sheet, do you want each line item, or a sum of all the totals for the month?

You see why I'd need to see your workbook example?

cheers