SumProduct Not Working with Date Values

Question

So I am trying to come up with a ranking system that will start at 1, and increment for every different client we have, and reseting each month. Heres what I have:

=SUMPRODUCT(--([Client]=[@[Client]]), --([Receive Date]> [@[Receive Date]]) )+1

When this is entered, a #VALUE is returned to the cell, however, when I use

=SUMPRODUCT(--([Client]=[@[Client]]), --([Sales Rep]> [@[Sales Rep]]) )+1

Or another column (that is not a date) everything seems to work out fine. Although, obviously, that makes the ranking on a rep by rep and client basis rather than month.

Any suggestions as to why the date column isn't working and how to fix it?

Edit: Oops, forgot to include this, since I want to reset the ranking every month, I have another column that concatenates the month and year, so a Receive Date of 3/10/2014 would become "3 2014".

Then I use the:

=SUMPRODUCT(--([Client]=[@[Client]]), --([Concat Date]> [@[Concat Date]]) )+1

And thats where things get squirrelly.

Edit 2: Alright, so I think I figured out the formula, which I constructed in this dummy workbook. Everything works perfectly here! But when I copy and paste it into the actual workbook I'm using, the #VALUE error pops up. I've checked the formatting of each corresponding column from my test file to my real one. Has me totally stumped, thoughts?

Answer 1

Now that you added in the edit of Concat Date, it makes sense... My belief is that you probably are creating that field as text rather than a date and so your comparison operatir will no longer work.

So, suppose your sheet had your dates in column A beginning in A2 - You could create the Concat Date field using the following formula:

=DATE(YEAR(A2),MONTH(A2),1)

OR

=EOMONTH(A2,-1)+1

In effect, it will give you the first day of the month for any date BUT it will still be a date, so your comparison operator will still work.

PS - You can still use cell formatting to make it look like `3 20141 if you really wanted to, but the most important part is that it is a date value so you can use it for comparisons!!

Hope this does the trick!!