David has summarized the issue very well. My bet is the only solution to
your problem is to have the decision makers tell you what they want. Give
them the same examples you gave us. Ask them whay they want to see in each
situation. Then program it.

Regards,
Fred.

"smw2340" wrote in message
...
I agree with your point there, however, the decision makers I am creating
this for do not agree. they want to see the % goal attainment whether it
is
positive or negative. this is why i'm stuck on trying to find a formula i
can imbed that will work.

thank you for your quick response however, i do appreciate the help.
smw

"David Biddulph" wrote:

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?