Copying or rolling up records

#1

I am attempting to build a small ERP using Airtable and I’ve run into a bit of a snag.

My goal is to have a table, lets call it “Job Method” which is essentially a list of materials or assembly that is tied to a sales line item of how a product is supposed to be made with fields such as “box, component, coloring ingredient, etc.”

When the items are actually ordered, which will be imported into another table called “Jobs”, I want the “Job Method” to flow into the “Jobs” table via the lookup or rollup method (I would assume). Where qty is being provided by the Jobs table, but all the rest of the assembly information and is being provided by the method (which is also pulling data from another table called “Part List” about the individual components).

My only issue here is sometimes there are rare circumstances where we would need to edit information in the rollup field specific for the job, but I don’t want to disable it for the rest. Would we just have to make a new “Job Method”? Or is there a way around this to override the cell in a rollup field…

Any ideas on how to do this? Also, if anyone has recommendations on anything I could do different, I’m all ears :slight_smile: Thanks everyone!

#2

Hi Scott, if you would be able to define the exemptions, I would think of 2 rollup field. In the 3rd field an IF formula may refer to the exemption and pick 1 of the 2 rollups. In that case the 3rd field would have the right information.

#3

@Andre_Zijlstra has got the right answer: Define an ‘override’ field you can use to handle exceptions. Depending on who actually is responsible for defining the exceptions, you could make both it and the Rollup field hidden fields, manually unhiding and hiding {Override} when one needs to enter data.

Your displayed {Job Method}, then, would be a Formula field configured something like this:

IF(
    {Override}!='',
    {Override},
    {Rolled Up Job Method}
    )