What are the limitations to access, can I do this? New to this, and need help!

[mumph]

Hi,

Could anyone please help me decide if I will be able to solve my problem by Learning Access?

My Company has just been sold to an other Company, so we are losing all Our IT systems. The New Company will not use Money on a New one, and I have been put in charge of creating something that will help us.
We are a test center, and therefor need somewhere to update status on tests etc.

Our needs are basically something that can take care of:
a) Customer information, contact information, invoice adress etc. We have a system that generates an unique number for each Client but we dont have anywhere to save information to make it easy Access to all of Our employees.
b) Project overview, where we can see status etc for all ongoing and closed Projects. Also need information like quotation value, PM, invoiced value etc.
c) Project administration, where I can put all the tasks to be done in each Project, and where Our staff can cross of when the task is done. Hopefully the information put in here can automatically update the status of the Project in the project overview.
d) Hour registration - who spent how much time on which teststation. This will be used for invoicing for each Project.



No we have 4 different Excel sheets to store this information, but since all the information is Connected somehow it would be Nice to have it all gathered.
It would save a lot of time if e.g. all Company and contact information would Autofil when I typed in the customer name..

Is this something I can use Access to create? I have never used Access before, so I have no idea what the possiblities in the program are. I am however ready to learn, and my boss has agreed to sending me to a course to learn it - if it will be useful for us.

I would really appriciate any answeres and tip from you!

[ItsMe]

Access is a good tool to manage data. You can use Access to create applications that interface with relational databases. It is a good all in one desktop solution.

Learning how to use it while creating a complex RDBMS is probably not a good idea. You might be able to implement something off the shelf like Microsoft Project and supplement that with Access.

Anything is probably going to be better than using spreadsheets for everything. But, you could find yourself in real trouble if your application does not function properly and everyone is dependent upon it.