Couple possibilities, what is qry_EmployeeHours? If you're trying to DSUM from the table, you should use the table there.

DSum("DirectHours","tbl_Direct_Indirect_hours","Contacts_ID=" & [Contacts_ID])

Other possibility, is contacts_ID a number or a string?

You're also going to need to add to the criteria a date range if you want to only get the hours for a period.

Also if that solution doesn't fix it. Let me know what the error says :P

Adam - Contacts_ID is a Number.  I tried the formula you recommended and I don't get any value returned.  I'm not getting the error anymore but all the cells are blank.  I'm just trying to get this first portion to work before I calculate by date range.  We are ultimately looking to build a report that shows hours available for each employee and the number of hours they've billed towards Direct and Indirect.

Can I see a picture of your query? That would clear up some things. Snip & Sketch

Can I see the top part too? Interested in how many tables you're bringing in and the joins.

If nothing pops out we can just change the query to use the SUM aggregate function instead.

I just realized why I'm not getting any values from the updated formula.  tbl_Direct_Indirect_hours doesn't have Contacts_ID in it.  I'm importing that from an excel spreadsheet that is exported from a different program.  That's why I was trying to use qry_EmployeeHours initially.  I actually got it to work using

Direct Labor: DSum("DirectHours","qry_EmployeeHours","Contacts_ID=" & [Contacts_ID])
Indirect Labor: DSum("IndirectHours","qry_EmployeeHours","Contacts_ID=" & [Contacts_ID])

I'll continue to work on this.  Not sure how I want to break it out beyond this point.

That will do it, so its working now again using the original expression?