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  1. #1
    Arkman is offline Novice
    Windows 8 Access 2013 64bit
    Join Date
    Jul 2016
    Posts
    1

    Will Access work for this project?

    I everyone. I have an issue I'm hoping that you can all help me with. This is going to be a long post so hold on...I work for a builder and do all the project estimating, bids, purchase orders, and so on. Currently there are 3 of us that work in some way or another on this stuff. One of our main tasks is to track all of the changes on a job and the cost associated with them. In order to do what we need to do we've created a pretty detailed spreadsheet.



    It does a few basic things.
    1. a couple hundred homes we are tracking on. Each home has 20-50 change orders as we call them (basically upgrades).
    2. Each CO needs to be tracked when it is started and completed.
    3. Each CO needs to be to have anywhere between 0 and 30 purchase orders associated with it.

    The biggest purpose of the sheet is to track how many POs are needed and how many are completed.

    Click image for larger version. 

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    If you look at the attached file you'll see a few things. Red - The address of the home. Blue - A unique ID number for each address and each change order. Green - The total is a number I enter to indicate how many POs we'll need to create, the completed is a auto filled when we mark of created a PO. Yellow - This is a list of all the different items or "cost codes" that we create purchase orders under. We put an x in a cell to indicate we have created it.

    Here are my main problems with the spreadsheet.
    1. More than one person needs to be in it at a time, which isn't possible. So instead we save multiple copies and try and copy and paste the new info when needed. It is a mess, as you can imagine.
    2. It is difficult to add address/change orders to the list. We use an online system to track all jobs and enter change orders and POs. Everything lives there and then we export reports as excel docs and copy paste into this big sheet to help track. It takes a few steps to get things cleaned up and able to add to the sheet. We are limited on how we export from our website system so we basically export the comprehensive list of COs out to a file and then weed out the ones that we've already copied. It is ok, but time intensive and prone to mistakes since one month we could have a CO12 that is one thing, then the clients could change their mind and we delete that then they add another CO that ends up being CO12. Now our spreadsheet has two different CO12 and we have to make sure to catch it and fix it.
    3. Most importantly it is really easy to miss change orders on our site and not get them into the sheet. That means they could get missed and no POs created for them.

    So my question is two part.

    1. With what you know would access be a good way to organize and update all of this data?
    2. If so, where do I start. I don't need a super comprehensive rundown of what to do, but it has been 10 years since I've worked with access. I can create the table, research the best ways to update that table and so on. But where do I go from there. To get similar info from the table in access to what i have on my spreadsheet. Use forms/reports/querys to enter info and and check of POs?

    I hope this all makes sense. I know Access is a powerful tool, but there is SOOOO much to it, I'm not sure where to start for this project.
    Last edited by RuralGuy; 07-22-2016 at 02:01 PM. Reason: Changed title.

  2. #2
    Bulzie is offline VIP
    Windows 7 64bit Access 2007
    Join Date
    Nov 2015
    Posts
    1,463
    Step one, hire a contractor to create the Access Database for you kidding but not really.

    On the high level, looks like you would have the following main tables and links:
    tblHome - HomeID, Address, etc.
    tblChangeOrders - COID, HomeID(links to Home Table), CO_DateAdded, CO_DateStarted, CO_DateEnded,CO_DateCompleted, etc.
    tblPurchaseOrders - POID, COID(links to ChangeOrders table), other PO fields

    So would be 1 home link to multiple ChangeOrders and 1 ChangeOrder link to multiple POs.

  3. #3
    RuralGuy's Avatar
    RuralGuy is offline Administrator
    Windows 10 Access 2013
    Join Date
    Mar 2007
    Location
    8300' in the Colorado Rocky Mountains
    Posts
    12,922
    You might also consider using a Project program like MS Project.

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