How to load a database with negative hours in Looker?

[NanaRosa]

Hello, all!

I'm trying to use a variable that contains the total hours of work people accumulated in a period - which means I can have negative totals. 

If I manipulate it in Google Sheets, it understands the negative hours and allows me to make calculations with it. But once I add the data to Looker, I'm struggling to format/configure it so I can use it correctly to visualize information. 

I got a small data sample here

What calculated field or data type I can use to fix this?

Thank you so much in advance.

[GavinW]

Is this in the context of Looker, or Looker Studio?

[NanaRosa]

Looker Studio, apologies.

[GavinW]

Hmm...if it were Looker, I would actually make these into two different metrics based on whether the number was positive or negative, hours gained and hours lost, and make each metric the absolute value of the duration. You could then take the latter away from the former to find out how many hours had been worked. Not 100% sure how you would do that in Studio though.