IF statement doesn't recognize negative currency

Question

Hello, my IF statement works well in all instances except when one of the currencies results is negative.

• N35= $293,000
• N40= -$24,776.44
• Therefore (obviously): N35 is Greater than N40

**My formula: =**IF(N40>N35,"Budget on Track",Over Spending")

Results with formula: "Budget on Track" is obviously wrong.

Excel does recognize that N40 is less than N35 because I have a conditional formatting that if N40 is less then N35 to format it red/pink (as seen in the image below).

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Please note that I'm using this formula in multiple other "budget fitness" boxes, so it can't  be specific to this one...

Answer 1

I also tried using both formulas using a static -$24,757.44 (currency or general or number) and it still won't recognize negatives...

Answer 2

Same thing- it still says "Budget on Track".

Answer 3

How about N35?

=IF(VALUE(N40)>VALUE(N35),"Budget on Track","OverSpending")

Answer 4

The -$24,757.44 comes from a calculation of values in a different sheet within the workbook: ='Budget 2016'!F7-(('Budget 2016'!M15*2)+(('Budget 2016'!M15*96%)*2)+('Budget 2016'!M15*94%)*8)

I tried using =IF(VALUE(N40)>N35,"Budget on Track","Over Spending"), but unfortunately it still gave me "Budget on Track".

Answer 5

Where are you getting the -$24,757.44?  If you are downloading it, there is a chance that it is a string, and not an actual number.  You could try this:

=IF(VALUE(N40)>N35,"Budget on Track","OverSpending")