Is Access Right for this Job?

[roybb]

Hi Everyone! First time poster here. Just for a bit of background: I am a computer science student. I have experience with SQL and I am familiar with relational database concepts. I am fairly new to Access I have a friend who owns a small business and wants to contract me to make a simple database. I am trying to figure out the best way to approach this. I am hoping someone can give me an idea if using access would be right for this job? Any other input/suggestions would also be greatly appreciated! My friend who owns a computer sales/repair company that offers "Support Contracts" to customers. This entails them buying a chunk of time in advance, and then using up that time minute by minute whenever they contact us and need help with something. The requirements are basically as follows: A simple database program that they can use to keep track of the amount of time a customer has left in their "Support Contract". They basically need a database front end that can do the following: 1.) The ability to add a new customer + add the amount of minutes they purchased when they buy a new support contract. (NEEDS THE DATE/TIME!) 2.) The ability to easily search/lookup a customer name to see if they have an existing support contract and if so how many minutes they have left. 3.) The ability to remove or "minus" chunks of time (minutes) from a customer's account when they help them, with the ability to enter a brief description of what they did for them (NEEDS THE DATE/TIME!) 4.) The ability to export or print a customer's "history" so that they can show them all of the dates/times they used up minutes on their account coupled with the brief descriptions they entered. They basically need to be able to give them a report of how their time was used up. (if printing support is difficult, the ability to export it into Microsoft Excel or something else that can be printed from is fine too). Thank you in Advance! Roy

[ItsMe]

Access can do it.

[June7]

I agree, a relational database is appropriate tool. This is like an inventory tracking. Record transactions of commodity coming and going, in this case the commodity is time. Sum the time purchased. Sum the time used. Calculate the difference for balance. Here is one article on the topic of 'quantity on hand' http://allenbrowne.com/AppInventory.html

In a double entry accounting system, the funds paid by customer for the time purchased would be an asset increase and the unused time would be a liability because you have yet to deliver the commodity.

You might even look at OTS accounting software like QuickBooks.