I have come across a very frustrating bug with Formula Fields that I couldn’t find a solution for.
I have a project that I use to track items for invoicing purposes. I use a form to fill out information on the category of work and the number of hours spent on that work. Once submitted, I have a Rule that defines the Rate based on the chosen category of work.
Now, I have created a very simple Formula Field for Total Before Tax, which is a calculation of Rate x Hours. However, in my screenshot, you can see that the value is $0.00, when it should in fact be $225.00. The only resolution I have found requires me to change the value of one of these two fields (Rate or Hours) and then change it back, which will trigger the formula field to update.
In addition, from my project view, the field for Total Before Tax is broken for all tasks, showing as if it’s going to update (but it never does), as seen below.
For debugging purposes, it may be worth noting that I have another Formula Field, Total After Tax, that is calculated by the Total Before Tax + GST + PST, and as you may infer, this value is not being calculated correctly as a result of the Total Before Tax calculation breaking. The GST and PST fields are also Formula Fields that are calculated based on the Total Before Tax x %GST or %PST
The Total Before Tax will remain uncalculated indefinitely until I have manually adjusted one of the fields mentioned, and won’t resolve itself in time. Any ideas/solutions?
Hi @MattClark_iDO , I take it the issue is still persisting?
I’m convinced that formulas are powered by ‘rules’ on the back-end and, as sometime rules may fail to trigger if changes are made too quickly by the user, the same can be seen with formulas not updating, although I’ve experienced this very rarely.
Yes, once a value is updated again, it does kick the formula into action and corrects the value.
Have you tried the same fields and ‘Total before tax’ formula in another project?
Or tried creating a new formula from scratch?
I also have some broken formulas in some list views (but the formula populates fine within the task details pane). I’ve noticed this happens when there all numerous inputs within a formula or others formulas chained within. I generally tend to avoid using other formulas within a formula, wherever possible, as they seem to perform better using the original input fields instead.
I’ve also noticed better performance when using the functions e.g. add(x,y) rather than typing x+y
Hope this helps, otherwise you can try opening a ticket with support.
Hey @Richard_Sather! Yes, unfortunately this has been happening for some time now, but has only recently been happening more frequently. In other words, the formula was being calculated at a much higher rate than it currently is. Almost every new task created is not calculating now, requiring the manual intervention to kick it into gear.
I gave some of your suggestions a go as well, and no luck I’m afraid. However, I did find that the values eventually showed in the project list after about 5 minutes without touching anything.
It may be that this lag is being caused by some nested formulas within other formula fields, as you suggest.
I’ll submit a ticket with support, and in the meantime have set up a manually triggered rule to rewrite the value of the Rate field simply to get the formula calculated
