I've got a spreadsheet I use for budgeting and mostly it works well. The only problem I have is where the is a negative number next to a positive, it adds them, instead of subtracting the positive from the negative.

Let me explain a bit more. Cell B7 SHOW 1.29, Cell C7 shows -98.10. Now instead of D7 showing -96.81, it shows -99.39.

It's subtracting, but in this instance it should add, so I need to modify my string to include this instance.

Here's the string

=IF(OR(B7,C7),IF(B7-C7>0,FIXED(B7-C7,2)&" over ",IF(B7-C7<0,FIXED(C7-B7,2)&" under","at budget")),"")

Help, anyone?Instead of using cells A1 and B1 in your description, it would have been helpful if you had stated the cells that would work with your formula. I believe that would be B7 and C7, right? Is one of those columns budget and one actual activity? Which is which?

Have tried approaching this from a different angle? Perhaps you don't need such a complicated formula. What if you simply had a column showing the difference and then used Conditional Formatting to, for example, display over-budget cases in red?

It would have been helpful, but you figured it out I was just trying to illustrate what I wanted it to do. While you're right in that I could have an easier formula, this is what my spreadsheet was loaded with, and it's the only bit of it that doesn't work juts how I'd like it. If it's too complicated, I'll leave it, it doesn't make that much difference, since it's very rare C7 shows a negative number, I'm being finicky.

B7 is actual and C7 is budget.

It does the 'over budget' 'under budget' part fine, it just doesn't CALCULATE the FIGURE properly when budget shows a deficit and actual shows a positive.So, B7 is $1.29 and C7 is -$98.10, right? Why do have a negative number in the Budget column, or either column for that matter? That makes no sense. If I remove the minus sign and only use positive numbers, the formula seems to work correctly, whether B7 > C7 or VICE versa.Sorry, my first post was completely ill thought out, I've edited it to make more sense.

Does it help to know that B7=B5-B6 and C7=C5-C6

B5 is actual total income, B6 is actual total expenses, which themselves are made up of a sum of other cells, but these parts work fine.

B5 is budgeted total income, B6 is budgeted total expenses, same as the above.

Now, this month for example, I have more budgeted expenses, than budgeted income.

But, so far as my sheets been used through the month I don't have a deficit in actual income and expenses. Does that help some more? Can I upload my sheet somehow?Shameless Bump Quote

Can I upload my sheet somehow?