Compare finish date with target date

Question

Would like to keep track of late Projects by comparing the finish date with the target date but are unable to do so. The idea is just to filter and count the summary tasks which have a later Finish date than the target date and present that as a the number
of late Projects. However it does not work, when trying to setup the filter Project tells that the target value can not be used for comparasion against the finish date.
Does anyone have a workaround or maybe a better solution to keep track of late Projects. Please note that we are talking about Projects that risk to be late compared to a date promised to a customer. When we plan we always add some extra time at the
end to have some extra when the Project is delayed at a certain department, however we want to keep track of how many late Projects we have and how late they are. Are not after seeing the status for each departments, only how we are doing in relation to what
we have promised our customers.
Kind regards //Anders

Answer 1

Anders,
Trevor and Dale have tried to steer you towards the normal tracking fields and methods already available in Project, but let me take a more direct approach to your exact question. First of all, you didn't tell us what field you are using as the "target date".
I'll assume it is the Date1 field manually entered for each summary line.
You could probably produce something close to the report you want with custom field formulas, filters and some manual counting but let me offer a more automated approach. The following macro will examine each summary task in your project and determine if
the finish date is before or on the target date (Date1), or if it is after the target date. If it is after the target date, that will count as one late project/order and add it to a running count of late orders. The difference in days will also be tracked
and added to a running total of delay. At the end, a message will appear in the exact format you describe.
Sub LateReport()
Dim t As Task
Dim LateCount As Integer
Dim LateDays As Integer
Dim TotDelay As Integer
For Each t In ActiveProject.Tasks
    If Not t Is Nothing Then
        If t.Summary = True Then
            If DateValue(t.Finish) > DateValue(t.Date1) Then
                LateCount = LateCount + 1
                LateDays = DateValue(t.Finish) - DateValue(t.Date1)
                TotDelay = TotDelay + LateDays
            End If
        End If
    End If
Next t
MsgBox "Number of late orders: " & LateCount & " (" & TotDelay & " days of total delay)"
End Sub
Note, in my view, and I'm sure in Trevor and Dale's also, the Finish field of the summary line does not indicate completion, it simply indicates the scheduled finish date of the last task in the subtasks under that summary. I think you should use the Actual
Finish date as the comparison value since it indicates when the project/order is complete. If you do decide, actual finish is a better choice, then substitute t.ActualFinish for t.Finish in the above macro.
My input.
John