I am trying to count how many times a customer has a discrepancy using a
COUNTIF formula.
I have set up:

=COUNTIF(S:S,"CUSTOMER") - where S:S is a column of drop down lists where
"CUSTOMER" can be selected.

However, I need to have counts per month. I tried to specify the data per
month like:

=IF(MONTH(B:B)=5,COUNTIF(S:S,CUSTOMER),) - where B:B is a column of dates.

Is this even possible? Do I need to enter my dates as =DATE(2006,5,16)?

Thanks for your time.
Scott