I used a decode statement, so I only used 2 left parentheses and 2 right parentheses. I confirmed this with a find and replace search.
You're right, however, about there being too many characters. I concatenated several fields in order to perform the function I needed to do. There's no way for me to shorten the concatenations, since each field plays a part in determining what cost number an employee should have. The cost numbers themselves are quite lengthy (13 characters for each cost number). I guess I need to try a case statement as Charles indicated, but that would take me a long time to analyze and create.