A less disgusting formula to compare two DateTime fields?

I have a saved search with a criteria to compare two datetime fields ("Is field A after field B?"). The only way I know to do this is to use date arithmetic with a Formula(numeric) criteria, something like this:

{custrecord_plp_project_id.lastmodified} - {custentity_nv_projorpricinglastupdated}

greater than 0

If those were Date fields it would work fine, but with DateTime fields it throws

Unexpected Error

:h_a_w:

As a workaround I'm converting to string with a known format, then parsing back with the same format and then doing the comparison.

to_date(to_char({custrecord_plp_project_id.lastmodified}, 'mm/dd/yyyy hh24:mi:ss'), 'mm/dd/yyyy hh24:mi:ss') -  to_date(to_char({custentity_nv_projorpricinglastupdated}, 'mm/dd/yyyy hh24:mi:ss'), 'mm/dd/yyyy hh24:mi:ss')