Instead of starting with forms, it would be helpful if you gave a description of the business in simple English. Perhaps you could use a quote for something and tell us about which and how business processes handle the quote from start to finish. This will show the "work steps" in context and will help identify tables and relationships; and then the user interface(s)/forms involved.
Putting it simply my company is a foundry that makes metal parts from ceramic molds providing mostly "raw" castings, or parts that have no or very little work done, beyond their creation, to them by us. To some customers we do provide more services such as machining, heat treatment, non destructive testing, plating and sometimes passivating. The nature of those services isn't important in itself mostly just the fact that we need to cost for them when quoting a job for a customer.
The quote is generated by the estimating department and is used primarily by them and the quality department. The quality department releases the job to go on to be processed into the plant, they use the quote to build the job "traveler" that follows the job through the plant, which is created in a different system. So the quote itself is generally seen by few people at the company.
The quote is created when a customer requests one for a new part/casting, we would then have to create a new "die" number which is what we use internally to identify the part/casting and a new quote would also be created for that die number for that customer. Unless the part is one that we have done previously then we would choose to either use the existing quote used when the part was previously run or copy and create a new one that will be updated to reflect a change in costs that may have occurred. If a new die number was created that number will be attached to the customer part number which is provided by the customer on their drawing or print. Meaning that one customer could and generally does have many die and quote numbers attached to them.
The quote is then populated to include information that relates to that specific die numbers design requirement, such as the material to be used specification to which the material is built weight of the part cost of the raw material components. Each of these aspects have their own tables from which the user can select the appropriate option for that part/casting. The material price per pound is pulled from an excel workbook that is updated by our receiving/purchasing department as the cost of alloys change over time. This information is pulled from either the customer print or PO to be entered into our quote.
When the estimator finishes the quote one will go to the customer with information pertaining to the job and one is printed and kept in our file for our reference. The second, internal quote contains more details that the other does not, it includes all of the labor times and costs, weights for the castings, vendors to be used for out side services and a break down of the cost for the process by number of parts ordered.
Comments are provided to the customer so that they know clearly what processes they are or are not being charged for. Some of the parts/castings require testing and certification and this section is where we provide that information and have a selection of comments that are frequently used so that the estimators do not have enter the comment each time a new quote is generated.
There are also costs that come as a standard that are calculated outside of the database and are entered into the master data form and then go into each quote. Things like labor cost factors, material cost factors, minimum charges assessed by outside vendors and also the percentage of scrap to be calculated for the job, commission and overhead.
I don't know if I clarified anything at all here or if I made it more confusing for you. If there are any points hanging you up please let me know I will try to clear them up. I will post a sample of what I have created so far so that you can see maybe a little better what I am talking about. Thank you for your help.