Subtracting numbers should be 0 comes up with difference

Hello,

I feel a little crazy with this ask - because it seems so simple, but I cannot find a similar post. I am trying to subtract two numbers - one from an input file (Fixed Decimal), and one that I calculated in Alteryx (Fixed Decimal). These two numbers are equal in the export to excel (comes up with a difference of 0) however when I try to calc the difference in Alteryx it comes up with a really small difference (ex - .0000000000015). Why is this difference coming up?

Input

Output

Data Investigation

Accepted answers

jdunkerley79

All formula calculations in Alteryx treat numbers as doubles (even if the value is a fixed decimal).

This can lead to precision errors like you are seeing.

All comments

jdunkerley79

All formula calculations in Alteryx treat numbers as doubles (even if the value is a fixed decimal).

This can lead to precision errors like you are seeing.

ThizViz

Just going to chime in because I dealt with a very similar issue that drove me nuts until I contacted support. In my case, I had NULLS in the data I was putting into Alteryx which was causing my results to differ from what Excel was showing. So just in case the proposed solution doesn't work, try tossing a formula into your workflow to convert NULLs to zero.

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Formula-Tool-Replace-NULL-in-all-columns-350-columns-with-0/m-p/90007#M31358

kierabohan

That makes sense, is there a way to make it subtracted on fixed decimals? Or maybe I should round the numbers and then subtract.

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