Advice needed

[nickcartwright]

Hi guys,

I'm very new to Access and well my first project maybe very ambitious to say the least, so any help and guidance would be very much appreciated.

I work in the distribution / logistics world and we need to create some type of booking diary / database.

We currently use a spreadsheet which I've attached and just let me explain this to you.

Column A - The booking reference given when someone books a vehicle in (I want this to be automatically generated which is pretty easy)
Column B - Is the booking time which are in static slots
Column C - Is the arrival time of when the vehicle came
Column D - Is the time the vehicle left
Column E to I - Speak for themselves, Though H is a static list which needs to be picked from a drop down
Column J - Is the type of job, inload/outload etc...
Column K&L - Is the amount of pallets that will be coming in or out in relation to that booking
Column M - Is which 'room' that stock will be moving into or out.

The rest of the spreadsheet doesn't matter as those are the main areas which we want to control.

So really just some advice on where to start first, Obviously we want to create reports sorting by customer, calculating late deliveries etc...

Many thanks in advance.

Nick

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Look at my answer here:

http://www.access-programmers.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=126927

The same answer applies to your question.

 

[dsigner]

Nick,
A lot of work must have been done to get to the database which you attached. Trouble is we don't see any of it and the answer to your database design is in that work.
Look at your input forms (I mean the bits of paper filled out and signed off in the warehouse). If they are actually controlling your system then they work at least to some extent. Apply normalisation to them. In non-computer terms one piece of information should have one source. If they are duplicated sources then decide which is the primary source.
Now you know where all the information is coming from you can translate that into computer input forms.

Now check your out put. What info do you want on what reports. Can you map that info to the inputs above Either as raw data or as calculated fields. If not then there is something wrong with your inputs so go round the loop again.

From that point you can start to use Access to join the two together.