OK, Let's eat this elephant one bite at a time.
When they click on Area, I want them to see only areas that they are assigned to.
A low tech solution here is to have a list user field on the Areas table and assign the area to the correct manager(s).
Then you can have a report where the assigned managers includes the current user and change the form properties to use that report for the drop down list of areas.
Then, based on what area they choose, they can pick from a list of accounts.
You already have a Relationships where one are has many Accounts. Great. When they enter an expense the record will know the Area, so set the Field Properties for Related Account on the Expense table to be conditional on first selecting an Area.
and a specific set of categories that are related to that area/account combinationSo One account has many Categories. You should be able to set the field Property for Related Category on the Expense record to be (similar to the above) conditional on first selecting the account.
Conditional Drop downs are super powerful and perform really well for the user experience, so you are on the right track here.
Post back if you get stuck. This is really classic sweet spot stuff for Quickbase.
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Mark Shnier (Your Quickbase Coach)
mark.shnier@gmail.com
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