In the following function I am turning a shopping cart into an order. The order has an order header record and many detail records. I use auto increment to assign the order id and populate the order detail records with order id using the LAST_INSERT_ID() function. Next,I want to store the order id in a session variable but $SESSION['MM_ORDER']=LAST_INSERT_ID(); does not work. what am I doing wrong. Everything else works fine in this function. How does one assign LAST INSERT_UPDATE() to a session variable? Dennis Brownlie del mar data systems dennis@windowareaccounting.net function MakeOrder($ItemId,$today,$adminid,$oe_id) { mysql_query("INSERT INTO inorder(order_id,admin_id,order_date) values (null,'1',NOW())"); "SELECT last_insert_id() as id_number from INCART"; // the next line does not work $SESSION['MM_ORDER']=LAST_INSERT_ID(); mysql_query("UPDATE incart SET incart.orderid = LAST_INSERT_ID()"); mysql_query("INSERT INTO inorderdtl( order_id,part_id, price, qty) select orderid,part_id, price, qty from incart where cookieId = '" . GetCartId() . "'"); }