Hello everyone,
My question overlapped with many sub-forums but it is mostly one regarding organization and theory so I believe this is the right place to ask.
I am currently interning in a commodities firm where we deal with a lot of warehouses where we store material. We deal with 3 types of warehouses:
- Ports - facilities that are next to ports and discharge large seagoing vessels.
- Riverports - facilities in rivers that discharge barges.
- Inland - facilities with no waterways nearby, which can only handle material from trucks and/or rail cars.
Each of these facilities offers us two categories of rates; rent and handling.
- Rent - the cost to store material in the warehouse (usually in $/short ton/month). Different for inside and outside storage.
- Handling - the cost to handle material in/out of a warehouse (usually in $/short ton).
Another categorization is the different shapes of material that we handle. Depending on what shape the material has, warehouses and stevedores will charge different prices to store/handle it.
Finally, different rail-carriers serve different facilities, something which I would also like to keep track of.
What I would like to do is create a database with all our warehouse information, so that it can be referred to and amended in the most user friendly way possible (forms, reports etc.). I currently have most of the data in Excel format but it is very had to keep track of it, update all tables simultaneously when adding a new facility etc. This is why I thought Access would be the best solution.
This database's primary purpose would be to create reports that can be given to traders, outlining the cost to handle and store material in a particular facility. This would mean that functionality to find the cheapest rate in an area would be needed etc. Export to Excel would also be very useful.
I would very much appreciate as much help as I can get on the matter. I have attached a sample database for your information; in design view I have a description of what the variables in the tables are. Please check the relationships for a clearer understanding of how these fields are intertwined.
Sample Warehouse Database.accdb
Thank you all very much for going through the long post and I hope you can help me out.
Best regards,
gmyt72