"barbarat" wrote:
can you explain CEILING to me, please?

Forget about Excel's CEILING() function. It is poorly
defined, in my opinion. Besides, I really did mean
ROUNDDOWN(...,0), even for negative numbers,
although that should not be an issue for you.

I am trying to do the second formula, and since the
limit on compensation is 200000, thought ths would
work...it doesn't.:

IF([...] CEILING(g1=200000)MAX(G1*.03*+G1*.087),0))))

I am not exactly sure what you are trying to write. The
above is syntactically incorrect. Even if you meant:

CEILING(g1=200000,1)*MAX(...)

that is non-sensical. CEILING(x,1), in this case, returns the
largest integer value of x rounded up, away from zero. The
expression "g1 = 200000" is a boolean (true, false), not a
number that we would normally apply CEILING() to.