New way to handle NULLs and divisions by zero

...that's what we were working on over past couple of months.

When performing numeric calculations TeamDesk used to distinguish between NULL (that's when user left input field blank) and zero. NULL is a special value that does not compare to anything and requires special form of check for it. Moreover result of any arithmetical operation with NULL is also NULL and here we received a lot of questions like "I'm using the formula [A]+[B]+[C] and the result is blank value, why?" The answer is simple: A (or B or C) is blank. Ok, but for non-techie user it's a bit hard to understand.

We had an option that control NULL behavior during the calculations, called "Blank as zero" that substituted NULL values with zeros during the calculations but this option was often turned off.

Another reoccurring problem was the division by zero error. It's not a secret we are performing calculations using underlying database engine (namely, Microsoft SQL Server) and when first division by zero is encountered, it stops data extraction immediately returning the error message. Unfortunately, without any kind of location information. So user ended up with "Division by zero" message on screen with small chance to guess the formula that caused the error to fix it.

Finally we decided to address both problems at once.