Designing (Duplications)

[jonamua1971]

Hi All,
i need help with designing a small database. This is what we do.
we receive reports on people in our eight different locations . we then enter all that data in our old database but we have no way of knowing if the data we are entering has been entered already. The people that send us data send it by fax as well as mail. N.B. we receive two to three info on one person and we have about two hundred people.
Any help will be highly appreciated.
Thanks

 

[FoFa]

Need more information.
Is the report information entered, kept as history, or is the same record updated with the new information each time (over written)?
Is there some identifier on each report that makes that report unique?

 

[jonamua1971]

Thanks for your reply.
the table has the following:
location name,County,date of the report,name of the person the report is all about, details of the report and action taken or follow up.
we don't want to enter the details of report twice on one person.
currently theres no way of us knowing of the details of reports on one person has been entered by the staff who who are taking over from .
i hope you get the picture

 

[FoFa]

If you have the report date associated, why not display that so they know if the report they are keying off of is already entered? I would assume it would be the same report date, no?