SUMIF problem

So i have a balance sheet which has columns for each month of the year and this sheet collects data from other sheets to display summarized data.

example- on my sales sheet i input each individual sale into a row. i use the date format 01-AUG-13 however on the balance sheet the column for August would just say AUG. now when i try to run a SUMIF function so that the sales column in august on the balance sheet collects and adds all sales in august on the sales sheet it does not return a value. I know that the formula is correct because if i change the date format on the sales page to just AUG (and not 01-AUG-13) it returns the correct value for the test data I've supplied. I understand because the criteria isn't an exact match it doesn't return the data but is there a way to get round this without the use of let say helper columns and the MID function?

Any help much appreciated.

Oh the formula I'm currently using is =SUMIF(Sales_date_range,A3,Sales_VAT_Range)

On your summary sheet your should enter a date in A3 which is the first of the month (i.e. 1/08/2013), and then apply a custom format to that cell of mmm so that it only shows the abbreviated month. Then you can change your formula to this:

=SUMIFS(Sales_VAT_Range,Sales_date_range,">="&A3,Sales_date_Range,"<="&DATE(YEAR(A3),MONTH(A3)+1,0))

Hope this helps.

Pete

SUMIFSforum.xlsx

Thanks for your reply Pete.

Im not sure that will work and its likely its because i explained it poorly. example WB attached.
So on the vat sheet i want any and all vat amounts added up for the particular month.

Hope this helps.

see attachment

Absolutely brilliant!! Cant thank you enough!!!