I'm pulling my hair our with this one!

[Galaxiom]

If I remove the ""'s from $0.00 and save the query, Access puts them back!

The "$0.00" criteria is because you converted the field to strings when you applied a Format to Currency in a query before you Summed the field. Summing a text field is likely to do weird things because, at best, it will implicitly cast to a number, probably a Single or Double. Remove that format and any like it so the values stay as Currency.

Formats should only be applied right at the end. My preference is to use the Format property of the control on the form or report.

I did this to one place I found last night but didn't get to the bottom of it. There must be more problems.