counting real records

[Kenneth Brody]

On 8/12/2013 11:21 AM, scooter6 at gmail.com wrote:
> Should seem simple but let me explain...
[...]
> Some records will only have 1 person associated with it
> i.e.  1234-0001  John Smith   Balance  150.00
> So, field 1 = 1234
> Field 2 = 0001
> Field 3 = 1234-0001
>
> Some records will have multiple people associated with it
> i.e. 1234-0002-1  John Smith   Balance  200.00
>        1234-0002-2  Mary Smith   Balance 200.00
>        1234-0002-3  Billy Smith    Balance       .00  (paid their portion)
>
> In each case, each one of those should ONLY count as '1' record
>
> What I'm trying to do is get a count for all records, soley based on first
> 9 digits
> So, if I run processing for client 1234, using the above example, it should
> show me I have 2 records (1234-0001 and 1234-0002, regardless that
> 1234-0002 has -1 -2 and -3 associated with it.
> Each of these will also have a balance associated with them.  I'm only
> wanting to pickup the balance 'once' for each of these records, even if one
> of the '-1, -2' etc has a zero balance.
[...]

Why should those 3 records count as only 2?  If you were shown those records 
and told to manually count them, by what process would you arrive at "2"?

Is it purely the fact that client number "1234" has records with "0001" and 
"0002", regardless of how many "0001" and "0002" records exist?  Or is there 
some other calculation involved?

-- 
Kenneth Brody