Apple Numbers use Actual date instead of formatted date

I have a spreadsheet with a list of months as the columns with the value 1/1/2020, 2/1/2020, 3/1/2020, etc. The cell format has been set to January, February, March, etc. When I attempt to use date for calculation, it uses the month name and not the date. Example: =SUMIFS($Amount,Date,">="&E1,Date,"=03/01/2020" it works as expected. Is there a way to force Apple Numbers to use the Actual value and not the formatted one? The documentation says it should be doing this, but it does not.