Query to track product sales

[treeman]

I'm in need of tracking products sales. I have a a typical data base with an Orders Table (includes Order Date) and an Orders Detail Table which includes the Product Name, and Qty (sold per order).

I'm trying to start with figuring out the best way to do this. Whether it's a form or report or a graph or all of the above. I would need to see monthly or quarterly data by year and possibly view multiple years at the same time so I can compare. The report, form or chart should be able to show all products or a selected group or individual products using parameters. Of course, what I'm looking for is total number of products sold per product per date range.

I'm not sure what I should be going for here but I do know it probably has to start with a query. I do have a form already, for another purpose, that allows me to select a date range for products sold (it doesn't do anything for totaling per product) But I also think I have to be able to see monthly totals as well.

Any help in pointing me in the right direction would be appreciated.
Thanks


Access 2013

 

[plog]

Sounds like you don't actually know what you want. I would take 5-10 minutes to think about what you actually need. Then, pick up pen and paper and crudelymock up the report you hope to end up with. After that, move to Excel or Word to lay it out exactly as you want. Then you build the queries to feed it data.

 

[treeman]

I don't know what I'll eventually want or will need but to start, I do know that I want to view total product sales (units sold, i.e Qty), per product, per month for a particular year.

I had tried a totals query but it returned too many results so know I'm thinking it might be a cross tab query that I need?

 

[plog]

My advice is to think about what you want and then take the steps to get there. Throwing things at the wall until something sticks is also a method. Less efficient and more time consuming, but a method that will eventually work as well.