Looking up invoice data set against 2 sources

[krishnagandhi]

Hi,

I receive invoices from vendors (in easily usable excel format) and i need to check the rates in the invoice against 2 databases ( really just excel files). I need to add columns to this to return the billing rates in these 2 databases. The reason i can't combine these 2 databases is because one is based on employee names and the other is based on titles. Is i feel like there is a simple way to do this with Multiple Join but i can't for the life of me figure it out. Here is a picture of what i am trying to accomplish

[markcurry]

If you Join your Green table above with your Lookup Table 1, you'll get the rates from Table 1 for 4 records, so use the Union tool to join the L and J outputs.   (Could be the L or R, depending what way you have set up the Join, it will be one with 1 record).

Then do the same for your second Lookup Table.

[krishnagandhi]

So that is how i attempted to solve the issue, however after the second table is joined and unioned i end up with more records than i started with. i am thinking maybe it has something to do with the fact that the second table is a vstring look up, but i'm not sure. As you can see from the picture i have 17366 records after the first union, which is good, but after the second one somehow the number goes up to 17502

[markcurry · Accepted solution]

Check to see if you have any duplicate names your table, and your 2nd lookup table. 

In the example above, if you had 2  x 'Smith, Jo' in your 2nd lookup table, it will Join both records with your data, so you would end up with 4 records in the Join, and the two unmatched records in the L output giving 6 records.

[krishnagandhi]

That is exactly what was happening! Thanks