>In the example above, I meant to type:
>
>SELECT yAmount, 9999999.99 AS yBalance FROM AITEMS ;
>WHERE AITEMS.iACCNTS = piACCNTS INTO CURSOR RUNBAL NOFILTER

Notice my added NOFILTER, to prevent a filtered table.
What we typically do is:

USE DBF('RUNBAL') again in 0 alias RUNBAL2 (or whatever)

This creates a writeable cursor. I conduct much of my application data business using these cursors. They're fully writeable, indexable, and low maintenance, since they're automatically cleaned up, and no view hassles, either, if you don't need much table updating...