The advice is that percentages are pretty meaningless in that situation. If
you make a small adjustment and think about a case where the goal is to
break even; how would you define your percentage there?
In the case you quoted, if you wanted you could look at the difference
between target and actual, and take that as a percentage of the magnitude of
the target, so ($100 - (-$100))/abs(-$100) would give a 200% improvement,
((-$60) - (-$100))/abs(-$100) would be a 40% improvement, breaking even
would be a 100% improvement, and achieving the target would give a 0%
improvement, but (as I said at the start) I don't think that percentages are
usually very useful in such situations..
--
David Biddulph

"smw2340" wrote in message
...
I want to write a formula that calculates the percent attainment of a goal
i.e. profit goal. If i have a goal of $-100 and actually attain $100
(positive) profit. What is the formula to write such that the resulting %
does not contain a negative? Additionally, would like the same formula to
take into account if goal is $-100 and actually attain $-60, the %
attainment
should be positive.

any advise?