Kevin,
It sounds to me like you have pre-allocated batches and you want to create "sub-batches" on the fly. I'd use another column to hold this info as you allocate a unique sub-batch number to the person. It's then an easy task to find the rows not currently allocated to someone (ie subbatchno = 0). As a person commits their sub-batch you can flag it complete by doing something like innverting the sub-batch number to a negative value. If they revert the sub-batch just set the value to 0 to return it to the pool of available records.
>Rather than continue plugging holes in this, I'd like to recode this area. I'd like
>suggestions on how to do this.