Need help getting If construct in PDF Manager to work

I'm building a Work Order PDF that will be used by our service team. The PDF is populated by our sales team's proposal information (which they input into Sugar). It needs versatile and concise, so I've really dived into using the If/Else function. Everything's turned out pretty great and I'm in the fine tuning phase. Right now I'm stuck on one thing.

Here's the function I need to work.

{if $fields.gc_change_order1_c!=''}(Add'l: {$fields.gc_change_order1_c}/{$fields.gc_qtty_measurement1_c}){/if}

It's seems very simple but it keeps displaying (Add'l: {$fields.gc_change_order1_c}/{$fields.gc_qtty_measurement1_c}) regardless of whether $fields.gc_change_order1_c! is empty or not. Since $fields.gc_change_order1_c is a currency field I've tried: !='0', !='$0' but it still displays regardless. How can I get this to work? Do empty currency fields actually display something and that's why it won't work?

FYI: $fields.gc_change_order1 is a currency field & $fields.gc_qtty_measurement1_c is a drop down field.