Can I calculate cost of production with access?

[YJasinski]

Hello, Im not sure if i should use access or another more suitable software to calculate costs of production for my business. I have a list of 50 products, each product is made by aprox 5 materials, plus manufacturing costs like energy, transportation, packaging, etc. I need a program that can tell me the costs of the products i need at the moment and that can calculate in real time and adjust cost depending on updated prices. Is access a good idea for this????



Thank you for your help

[NTC]

for calc of 50 products you could use excel....easier for beginners.

Access does math fine...but Access strength is multi user, history trends reports, etc if you are going to be contantly adding new data which needs to be sorted, organized , etc.

[NoellaG]

Hi,

I don't see why you couldn't use Access. Create a products table (for instance tblProducts), linked with a one to many relationship to the materials table (tblMaterials), and a one to many relationship between tblProducts and the Costs table tblCosts. Then using soime groupsqueries the prices can easily be calculated. One point to consider: prices can change, so you'll need some fields or history tables to determine the value/costs in ValidFrom (date) and ValidTo(date).
But if you take some time to make a solid table design, Access is a fine tool for the job you propose.

NG

[YJasinski]

Thank you, I will try creating a proper design. So far im using excell and the problem that i have is that the tables are too big, or too many.... so thats why i wanted to change to access. Will try designing using the tables you suggested. Although that way i will be repeating data in each table. I think i need to learn a bit more before asking more questions .