Is this possible?

[Sonicair]

Good afternoon all (or good morning)

I run a small business and as such would rather make my own invoices etc. I've created an invoice using excel... what I would like it to do is when I enter the name and address in their relevant fields, I would like the information to be put into access.

I've been advised to ditch Excel and just use Access.

The information that I input is as follows:

Name
Address
Town
Post Code
Telephone Number

Reg
Type
Make

Qty (multiple entires)
Description (multiple entries)
Unit Price (multiple entires)
Total (multiple entires)

Sub Total
VAT
Total

Whats the best way to produce this in Access please?

 

[LarryJ]

Ok, now that you are here in Access, I can give you some suggestions.

First suggestion, slow down! You need to plan this database properly. You can do what you want, but you want to do it the right way, or it won't be worth it in the long run.

What all are you going to track? From the little you've shown, you need a customer table (tblCustomer), and invoice table (tblInvoice) with the specifics of the invoice (customer, dates, etc.) and an invoice detail (tblInvoiceDetail) table which will have the invoice number allong with all the line items.

You will manage all the customer information, in that table.

In the Invoice table you can link to the customer table, so you do not have to enter the data more than once. This is where you will also generate a unique invoice number for each invoice (Autonumber). You may want to keep the date of the invoice, as well as any other particulars associated with the entire invoice.

In the Invoice table, you will use the invoice number, generated in the invoice table, associated with multiple records in this table (if you have multiple items on an invoice) so that you have a parent/child (or master/detail) relationship between these two tables.

At the time of printing an invoice, you can do your calculations for SubTotal, VAT and Total. You should not store calculated values in an Access table.

There is a lot to this, but you can probably find some examples of how to do this (if you aren't familiar with Access) in the templates that come with Access. I know it has an Expense database it will create for you as well as an inventory database and some others. Those should give you an idea of what's possible.

There is a lot (or can be a lot) to a good invoice database, so it's kind of hard to get into much more specifics than this, but this is the direction you need to head.

Good luck,
Larry

 

[Sonicair]

Thank you again Larry

I'll have a play about with the examples and take it from there

No doubt you'll here from me again pretty soon