Pass php var as form value

Not sure why this isn’t working, but I’m setting a variable in a form:

<input type="text" name="total_total" id="total_total" size="15" /> 

and updating it from another field:

<input type="text" name="num_reception" id="num_reception" size="15" value="0" onchange="document.myform.total_reception.value=75*parseInt(this.value);document.myform.total_total.value=75*parseInt(this.value);" /> 

and that works fine. However, when I try to pass that value to the next page, I get errors…

This works fine…

  <input type='hidden' name='pg_total_amount' value="50" /> 

This gives a “You are not authorized to view this page.” error:

<input type='hidden' name='pg_total_amount' value="<?php echo $total_total ?>" /> 

This gives an error that the value must a number be greater than 0:

<input type='hidden' name='pg_total_amount' value='total_total' /> 

Any ideas how to do this??

Thanks!!!