Count Invoices without Invoice Drill-Down

Question

I have a requirement to count the number of invoices by  posting period and vendor, for invoices that are less than a certain amount (say $500). I intend to get this data from the standard AP line item cube. Seems like it should be simple.
I can do this as long as I list each invoice (reference) in the workbook, and activate an exception. However, there are enough invoices to run out of rows in Excel.
How can I do the count, and only display the subtotals by period and vendor, and the total for the entire time frame?
I tried displaying the Posting Period, Vendor and Reference as a Hierarchy and then setting the expansion level to Vendor, but the 'Calculate Results as' is not invoked with the <$500 Condition activated.
I also tried using a formula variable, replacement path on the reference:
Variable defined as follows:
Type: Formula
Variable Name: ZFA0REFD
Description: Ref. Doc. No. Repl. Path
Processing by: Replacement Path
Characteristic: Reference (0REF_DOC_NO)
Replace Variable With: Attribute Value
Attribute: Characteristic Reference (Constant 1)
For Intervals Use: From Value
Offset Start & Offset Length: left blank
Evaluate as "Boolean" (Value 0 or 1) not selected
Variable used in formula (local to query) to count non-zero amounts less than $500, formula syntax as follows:
( 'Credit amt in LC < 500 ) * ( 'Credit amt in LC  <> 0 ) * 'Ref. Doc. No. Repl. Path'
Using the logic as described above, I get correct counts only if I have drill-down to the Reference (0REF_DOC_NO) level.
If I remove the drill-down to the Reference (0REF_DOC_NO) level, leaving rows only for Fiscal Period (0FISCPER) and Vendor (0CREDITOR), then the evaluation on amounts <> 0 and <500 is done at the Vendor (0CREDITOR) level, not at the Reference (0REF_DOC_NO) level. 
I have also tried counting with the drilldown by reference number, with a Condition applied, with no suppression of repeated key values, and with no supression of result rows. I was able to then apply Excel Auto Filter to the entire results area, selecting only the rows with "Result" of blank in the Reference characteristic column. This way only the sub-total and total rows appear in the spreadsheet.
I still have problems though with running out of rows in Excel (we process more than 70,000 invoices per month).
Please advise if any of you can think of a better solution that will work. I need to do this in a query -- I cannot modify the infocube.
I did do a forum search, and all I could find is how to add a count calculated key figure to the infocube. I need to do this at the query level.
Any clues will be much appreciated. (BW3.5 SP15 BEx deployment only - no web).

Answer 1

One of the 3rd-party Crystal Report viewers listed at http://www.kenhamady.com/bookmarks.html provides that functionality (but it requires you add some formulas to the report to enable that behavior).
You can see a video demonstration at: [In-Place Drill Down|http://www.milletsoftware.com/Download/DLV_InPlace_DrillDown.wmv]