Overlapping table field problem with forms and reports.

[Stephenson]

Hello all,



I have a DB I'm working on that logs all employee hours, equipment hours and vendor purchases. I'm having difficulties with my vendor table. I have four categories for vendors, rock products, materials, outside services and permits. Although most will fit into one of the four categories, some will fit more than one. I'm not sure how I should set up my tables. Currently I have fields for name, phone, address, etc, but I'm not sure how to differentiate the four categories.

I have a receipts form for adding purchases from vendors. The receipts form has a tab control for each vendor category. I feel there is a better way to handle this form for varying vendor categories. As the form and the table relationship is now the purchases for each tab show the same vendor. I would like a way to keep them separated.

For my report I would like to be able to pull records for specific vendors. I'm clueless on how to relate the records properly to the reports.

I have attached a file of my mess for demonstration. I know this is a vague question, but that should show how confused I am on how to solve this problem. If you have any ideas/suggestions please let me know.

Thank you for having a look.

[June7]

Appear to have circular relationships - review http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/...atabase-Design

Form and subform have the same data source. Why?