The problem in my case is that the "date" field does not exist in the table that i can compare against the start date and end date. i tried creating variables for each month that i could use as a filter in my report, but the formula does not seem to work with the AND operator as shown below.
jan 31 = If(todate("1/31/2014":"mm/dd/yy")> start date AND todate("1/31/2014";"mm/dd/yy")<end date) then 1 else 0
now, if i just compare the start date or the end date, i get correct results but not when i use both.