RE: finding differences in a list of amounts

Dan,

I'd suggest that this is the wrong approach to the problem. You could write a 
program to do all possible calculations based on your data set but if there's 
more than a trivial amount of detail records, the number of possible 
calculations grows very quickly (I think it's (number of rows ^ number of rows) 
- 1 possible combinations).

The way I would do it is to get the detail behind the user's spreadsheet and 
compare it that way (the detail has to come from somewhere so it should be 
available). Load both detail records into a table and use the query tool of 
your choice to find the differences.

I've had to do this type of thing on occasion and you may find that every 
record is different. Assuming that your report has something along the lines of 
an invoice total, it may just be a difference in what makes up the total. For 
example, the user may not be including things like freight or tax and you may 
have those included.

Matt

-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Bale [mailto:dbale@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Friday, September 17, 2004 2:24 PM
To: RPG400-L@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: finding differences in a list of amounts


(Cross posting to midrange-l, rpg400-l)

Anybody know of a solution for this?

I have a user that tells me that a report she is getting has the wrong total
amount.  The report shows the detail (a lot of it) but her total that she
keeps track of in a spreadsheet is different from the report's.  Her
spreadsheet doesn't have the detail.  Here's what I have:

$384,582.91 = the report total
$371,448.26 = the user's total
-----------
$ 13,134.65 = difference

Unfortunately, I do not have a single amount of 13,134.65 in my detail.  So,
I must have multiple amounts that total to 13,134.65.

The solution I am looking for is to be able to try all the combinations in
the detail to see what turns up equal to a given total amount.  For example,
if I have the following detail:
     185.69
  11,134.60
     500.03
   4,841.65
   1,500.02
     419.85
etc.
A good tool would be able to find that the 2nd, 3rd, and 5th amounts add up
to the total amount I'm looking for.

Does Excel have a function for something like this?  Or is there to do it on
the 400?  SQL functions?

tia,
db

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