Create a Simple Fee Calculator app using Automator?

This is the AppleScript version of that magic box where you put in a quarter in (your estate value), and a hand comes out of the box with your fee total. It produces $12000 for a $450,000 estate and $15,000 fee for a $600,000 estate valuation. It is fugly, but it works for these two estate valuation examples. Try it with other amounts which you can enter as $450000, $450,000, or 450000 formats.

Launch the Script Editor from Dock : Launchpad : Other. Copy/paste the following AppleScript into the Script Editor, click the hammer icon (compile), and then run. It will prompt you for the Estate value, and produce an output dialog:

You can initially save the AppleScript source by the first save and format as text to (e.g. esv.applescript). If you press the option key and Save As… you can save it as a double-clickable application (e.g. esv.app) on your Deskop.

The AppleScript code is in the reply to this post as the hosting software restricts how much can be posted at one time.

Found and fixed a changed Foundation method that worked on Mojave, but was removed in Catalina, but testing much larger numbers is not arriving at the correct fee calculation, so I am reviewing the code.

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Understandable.

I could probably do an AppleScript version but VikingOSX's will be better 😀

That’s not what Automator does. Just make a spreadsheet in Numbers or Excel.

however, if you wrote an AppleScript or shell script to do the Math, you could use Automator to take in the value and pass it to the script.

I know you don't want a spreadsheet but here is a quick non-bloatware Numbers version:

The calculation in the formula shown is that of cell E5.

In addition to total commission it performs and shows the intermediate calculations you wanted.

You did not define commissions > $25 million so it won't work for amounts that exceed it. Decide what to do about that.

I'd prefer to use VikingOSX's magic box too, but until he gets it working you can use the above.

Well, I had some very early successes, and for awhile today, thought I had it working when I was able to enter numbers up to 20,000,000 and get a result that matched calculations. However, as soon as I entered different portfolio values, then the results fell apart; the rule syntax became a quagmire, and I no longer have time to work on this.

So it looks like a spreadsheet solution, which I believe is better suited for this type of application.

The AppleScript has got me annoyed and I may continue to work on this just to conquer it, but don't expect anything soon, or potentially ever.

the rule syntax became a quagmire,

I figured it would.

Stepwise scales like you're proposing just don't lend themselves well to mathematical elegance. They're not logical.

You're better off using a function like f(x) = f(0) * e^rx

I know what you propose is simple and easy for a client to understand, but from a purely mathematical perspective I'd graph what you want to achieve, and find a function that resembles it. But that's me.