Multivalued fields to track items AND individual costings

[MackMan]

Guys. I've been using mutivalued fields for some time now with no issues. It's time to expand my current database, and toy with some self learning stuff in regards to taking mutivalued fields further.
Here's what I'm planning (if it's possible) hence why i'm here.

Lets say.. I have "one" total cost, but wish to split it between two or three multivalued fields to breakdown each cost individually, along with subsequent multivalued fields for components, along with subsequent multivalued fields for departments.

Example...
I, on behalf of my company, buy 3 hardware components in one transaction, and each of the hardware components is broken down to...

Component 1 : £900, component 2 : £1,300 and component 3: £750, totalling £2,950.
The supplier will post on one invoice, hence I can only see the bottom value of £2,950.

To the accountants, all they see is the bottom line on one record...
But for my departmental reporting, each component is listed separately, to track costs. If that makes sense?

It's a similar kind of thing that Quicken users and Money users are used to when splitting cheque / [check], or other transactions. This seems a much tidier way of inputing data for end users.

If it's possible, what research do I need to do?

If not, then I can work around it, but, this seems a better way of tracking purchase req's.

Many thanks, once again.

 

[Galaxiom]

Beware becoming too enamoured with multivalue fields. They are not supported in databse servers so become a serios problem if you ever need to upsize.

Better to focus on storing the data in relationally structured tables.

 

[MackMan]

I'm aware database servers don't support, but is it possible on stand alone applications?

 

[Galaxiom]

Multivalue fields are only used for small numbers of predefined values so they are not able to do what you would like.

Use related tables to store the extra data and subforms to enter and display it.

 

[pbaldy]

+1 for not using multivalue fields. Rather than investing "some self learning stuff in regards to taking mutivalued fields further", I'd invest the time learning the normalized alternatives. Say you expand your db into a really great tool that everybody can use and management says "MackMan, this is awesome. It's become so popular we need to move the data to SQL Server/Oracle/Whatever to support it". You want to be the one that says it will require a complete redesign or it can't be done instead of "no problem!"?

 

[MackMan]

Idea scrapped! Thanks guys! I will use an alternative

 

[Thales750]

I know you already scrapped it.

But the question for all future fledgling designers.

Why would you ever consider using multi-value fields?

If you need to show data in a group, you can always concatenate it in your forms and reports. Just my simple minded thoughts.