Static Cell References

John McLeod

I have a list of expenses paid to vendors.  The same vendor may appear in the list multiple times.  I am trying to figure out a way to summarize all payments to vendors.  I had looked for the ability to do a report and show the "top 10" vendors, or a pie chart, but could not get those options to work.  So, I wrote a formula that used "sumif" and summed the total spending for each vendor.  I have attached a screen shot of the sheet with the formula displayed.  The formula works, but when the sheet is sorted either in ascending or descending order, the ranges change, even though I used the "$" to indicate I wanted the range to remain static.  Any thoughts on how to accomplish this?  My ultimate goal is to be able to summarize all spending by vendor.

Thanks.

J. Craig Williams

Option 1: Use a hierarchy (the blue filled row becomes the parent) and use =SUMIFS(CHILDREN(), your criteria)

Sorting won't mess with the parent-child relationships.

Option 2: Move the formula somewhere else (either on the same sheet or another sheet using X-Sheet References) and then sum the whole column.

I move most of my KPI's to other metrics sheets to avoid this and other problems.

Craig

John McLeod

Thanks Craig, here are my thoughts:

• Option 1 - Accounts payable personnel will be the individuals entering the AP spending activity, so creating parent/child rows for all the spending may not be something  they are comfortable with or capable of, but I do think that would be a viable solution.
• Option 2 - If I move the formula somewhere else, either on the same sheet or another sheet, won't I have to somehow enter the vendor name in that other location as well so that the formula has a reference point?  In other words, If vendor ABC Company appears in the list 6 times, won't I have to enter it once in the "other location" so that the formula has a point of reference for what to sum based off of?  It seems like I would have to then manage a manual list of vendors in order to get the spending totals.

If I am off on any of these then let me know.  I just started using smartsheet just recently, so I am just learning what it can and can't do.  In Excel I would just use a simple pivot table to let it filter out duplicates and summarize the spending.  Can I do something like that in smartsheet reports?

thanks for your help.