Thanks for responding Helen

In response to the questions/points that you raised

> You should set its precision to 2 to match what you want to store.

Changing the precision made no difference

> Did you delete the old instance of the persistent field and then

recreate it?
Yes but it made no difference

> If you are certain of this, would you cook up a small demo project,

zip it up and send it through to me? Just send the demo project
source and the DDL for the table, not a database.

A small demo is on its way

> Also please indicate which version of ib 6 and which dialect you are

using.

Dialect is 3 I downloaded the version from
http://www.borland.com/devsupport/interbase/opensource/
it is 6.01

Thanks again
Peter Magor