Advice

[RussG]

I have been developing a catering order system at work. A demo version has been in test and initial issues sorted. The users are very happy with the way it works and though far from perfect it does everything they asked for and then some.

Basically, each order for refreshments/food creates a record and order number. Orders feed through to a daily 'jobs' diary sorted by date/time which the catering staff work from.

However, what they are asking for now is to be able to link some records together for collation/charging purposes. Grouping using the customer ID and the order Date doesn't work as customers could have many orders across many dates , and some of the orders by the same customer won't need to be collated together. My initial thoughts are to add a unique code to each order that needs to be linked , has anyone any ideas on this , is there an easy way to generate a code (perhaps CustID, OrderID , Date, other?) which can be added to other records to 'link' them.

I would be grateful for any suggestions.(other than a complete redesign )

Thanks
RussG

 

[jdraw]

I have been developing a catering order system at work. A demo version has been in test and initial issues sorted. The users are very happy with the way it works and though far from perfect it does everything they asked for and then some.

Basically, each order for refreshments/food creates a record and order number. Orders feed through to a daily 'jobs' diary sorted by date/time which the catering staff work from.

However, what they are asking for now is to be able to link some records together for collation/charging purposes. Grouping using the customer ID and the order Date doesn't work as customers could have many orders across many dates , and some of the orders by the same customer won't need to be collated together. My initial thoughts are to add a unique code to each order that needs to be linked , has anyone any ideas on this , is there an easy way to generate a code (perhaps CustID, OrderID , Date, other?) which can be added to other records to 'link' them.

I would be grateful for any suggestions.(other than a complete redesign )

Thanks
RussG

Can they - who are asking to have some records linked for charging - identify what it is that makes a group for collating?

As for unique ids you can use auto numbers, once you sort out what it is that must be unique.

 

[neileg]

I agree with jdraw. Access can only tell you something it already knows. The basis for linking orders must be present in the data.

 

[RussG]

Thanks for your replies.
The issue is a customer may request refreshments for multiple dates and times on one order request. The way I set up the DB was that each request(i.e. date and time request) is a seperate order and gets its own orderID. The users want to be able to pull off all these seperate orders into a summary for that Customer.
I have created a solution but it requires the user to select the orders they want to summarise rather than it be automated.
I currently have orderID, Customer details , date & time etc on the main form and order details on the sub. I really should have structured the db differently, orderID and customer details on the main form, date & time on subfrom 1 and order details on subform 2. Too far in to change at this point so I am looking for a workaround which isn't going to be too painful to operate.
Cheers
RussG