> The file contains inventory balances, and those are written in a hexadecimal value in the same record. Is there a good way to read that value and convert it into numbers that VFP can understand?

Beats me why they would store an inventory value in hex format. Regardless, given a string S containing a hexadecimal value such as "0A3F".

Function HexToNumeric
parameter s
s=Upper(s)
Local x,p,tot,d
x=len(s)
p=1
tot=0
do while x > 0
d=asc(substr(s,x))
d= iif ( d > 64, d-55, d-48)
tot = tot + d * p
p = p * 16 && or you can bitshift left 4 if you want
x = x - 1
enddo
return tot

This doesn't take advantage of some optimization techniques because it was originally written for Foxbase in 1987 and I've been to lazy to update it.