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Question

Is an automation the best way to tackle this?

  • January 28, 2020
  • 0 replies
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Hello,
I am trying to solve a problem and I believe automation may do the trick.  I just don't know how to do automations very well.

An example of what I'm trying to do is similar to a bank balance.

If I have a Bank Account table that has a related Check Book Table, I want the remaining balance to be calculated for each time a record is completed in the Check Book Table.

Is this best done by an automation or is there another way to do this?

Thank you,
Mike

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Mike michael.rorstad@ameebay.com
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Mike [LastName] [Designation] [JobTitle] [CompanyName] [City] [State] [Phone]
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QuickBaseJunkie
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Hi Mike!

I have an app very similar to yours.

I have an Account table that is the parent to a Transaction table. Then in the relationship, I have a summary field that sums up all the transactions which effectively gives me my account balance. 

Now, if you want that balance to also show up on the child record when the transaction is recorded you could use an automation or you could use a snapshot field.

A snapshot field would pull the current balance onto the record and make a 'snapshot' of it so that when the actual balance changes, this field stays the same.

An automation, in contrast, would 'stamp' the current balance on the record based on a trigger (such as the record being saved or modified).

In either scenario, you will need to add a lookup of the summary 'balance' field to the child record.

For a snapshot:
Add a numeric field and at the bottom of the settings set it as a snapshot field and choose the balance 'lookup field'. This will pull the CURRENT balance before this transaction is registered... so you likely will also need a formula field to calculate the 'ending balance'.

For an automation:
TRIGGER: when the record is added
ACTION: modify the record to copy the balance from the 'lookup field' to a static Numeric field filtering to where the Record ID = Record ID.

In either scenario, there could be a HUGE issue if a historical transaction was recorded incorrectly as it won't automatically 'recalculate' all the records that came after it.

If that's a concern you can just stick to a summary report that includes a running total.

Let me know if this helps 👍😊

Sharon



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Sharon Faust (QuickBaseJunkie.com)
Founder, Quick Base Junkie
https://quickbasejunkie.com
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