Target non-blank values for email automation and/or Page design

Hey ​@Gunnell!

Rather than having one field for each person I would probably suggest having one record for each person (just how invoice line items would actually work, right?).

Now, on your automation you will have a Find Records action, which will find records where Pay is > 0.
In such way, even if you have 10 persons, the email will only include records for those persons who actually need to get paid. 

Is this kind of clear? I’d be happy to provide further detail -feel free to schedule a call using this link!

Mike, Consultant @ Automatic Nation 

​@Gunnell 

I would recommend ​@Mike_AutomaticN’s approach above!

However, if you wanted to do this with a PDF file, you can create highly-professional PDF files with Documint, which allows you to conditionally show or hide data based on whatever conditions you set.

Hope this helps! If you’d like to hire the best Airtable consultant to help you with anything Airtable-related, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld

Hm, how fancy do you need it to look?  If it’s just internal could you get away with just sending something like this?

Janice - $100
Jill   - $120
Jerry  - $60

If so, I’ve set it up here for you to check out

IF(
  Janice, 'Janice - $' & Janice & '\n'
) &
IF(
  Joe, 'Joe - $' & Joe & '\n'
) &
IF(
  Jill, 'Jill - $' & Jill & '\n'
) &
IF(
  Jerry, 'Jerry - $' & Jerry & '\n'
) &
IF(
  Jess, 'Jess - $' & Jess
)

You could also try using HTML to create a table like structure too, but at that point you’d probably need to use Zapier / Make or something to send out the email instead; IME the ‘Send email’ and ‘Send Gmail’ actions don’t deal with complicated HTML very well

​@Mike_AutomaticN ​@TheTimeSavingCo Thanks for the replies! I may have oversimplified my original post so I didn’t end up with a question that was too long and confusing for anyone to even engage with haha.

I run a small music performance business where I book gigs and have a large number of contractor musicians who perform the gigs. The base I’m working in is my system for who to pay and how much. The email I’m working on is the email that would go out to performers of a specific event with the pay breakdown. Unfortunately, it’s a little more complicated than just needing their name and total amount. Contractors are paid based on their mileage to/from the event and then whatever is left is split evenly between them.

​@Mike_AutomaticN The challenge with putting people on rows is that I’m using a map integration to calculate the travel distances for me. An Events table links the members and venue. Then my “Pay Machine” table will calculate the travel distance for each member on the event and figure out all of the payment information. So I’m already using a bunch of lookup columns to pull in the needed info (like their home address) for that to run. I guess I could build out an automation that then takes the record from the Pay Machine table and splits out out into separate records in another new table, but I’m already working with about 30 tables and I don’t even know how many automations so I’m hoping to keep it as lean as possible.

 After I posted this question yesterday, I came up with a solution that technically works most of the time, but I’d love to be able to do this with names rather than lumping them into roles. I created new columns for each role (vox, guitar, bass, drums) with IF() statements to pull in specific contractors who play those instruments. Here is the preview of the email automation:

This will work OK for most events, but it’s not completely out of the question for a contractor, let’s say Jill, to play guitar at one event and bass at another - so I can’t keep her in the guitar bucket permanently. It’s also possible that I’ll need two guitarists or singers at an event which breaks the whole system.

Ahh, yeah, if you need that kind of flexibility I think you’re going to have to build that automation to split them out as separate records in the new table I’m afraid

You can do this with Airtable email automation by using a formula field to only show people with a payment amount. The formula will hide anyone with empty pay. Then, in the email body, you use that formula field so the message only includes names with payments like Janice, Jill, and Jerry.

Page Designer can also work, but it won’t hide empty fields easily like automation can.

If this feels hard, I can help set it up for you. Just let me know!