Order Manager Database

[Dynamite]

Hi, I wonder if anyone could help. I'm in the planning stages of creating a order manager in access for multiple ecommerce sites.

Database will store data on Customers, Inventory, Invoices, Returns, Shipments, Credits, Quotes etc for all sites, and also custom reports. And the idea is to have the database generate the ecommerce sites automatically as static html, which can be uploaded. As the orders come in they will be stored online, and then periodically downloaded into the database.

The reason is we currently have 3 sites running and managing inventory and stock control is the hardest, as currently there are 3 databases controling stock! Also when a customer telephones its difficult to know which site they have ordered from which is unprofessional, and we have to log into every site just to find their order.

Future ideas:- Meaning we are going to setup more sites which will obivously make the situation worse. We also want to branch out in into eBay using the eBay API to download transactions and sales, and will therefore need a place to store the data.

Can anyone foresee any problems with such a system? Any ideas or examples?

Thanks for your time.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

The forum's Search function works fine. Search for topics such as "Inventory" and "Stock Level"

 

[Simon_MT]

Before you embark on such a project, would it not be better to have Terminal Services running and get remote branch using Remote Session into one database. Providing you determine the branch tagged to each transaction it is easy to determine the source branch. You achieve one single controllable database. If later you decide to go the ebay route there is still only one database.

You already have a system written so why completely re-write it just to handle remote sites. I have two remote sites and Terminal Services running and it is so much easier that synchronising systems.

Not only is the data common to our sites but a lot of documentation so with Terminal Services everything is shared.