With the help of Snafu, who is a co-worker of mine, I figured out this one.
    I was resetting my $payment_count variable to 0 in the wrong place.
    He should've posted the answer here, I would've voted him up :)
    I pulled the autoincrement out of the conditional statement. I have had consistent results using it that way, but I agree that it is easier to read when separated.
many thanks...