comparing from two lists

hello,

i am working on a spreadsheet listing various documents, their priority level, and the amount of hours needed to complete each document in a variety of content types. each row is a new document, and the columns are 'Department', priority level, and then several columns with numbers in them designating the amount of hours needed to complete. i'm trying to make a summary of this information. i have used a SUMIF function to check first the priority, then sum the number of hours in each column. this works great. now i am trying to check first the department, then the priority, then sum the number of hours. any advice on how this can be done? perhaps my biggest question is how to get excel to compare multiple columns across a single row, for a whole range of rows?

i hope my question makes sense and someone can please help me out.

thanks in advance,
adam