Is Access the best Office program to create an Attendance Register?

[hongman]

All



I run a construction company and I am struggling to keep track of who is on what project for how long etc.

What I want to create is something myself or my partner can do a daily input in.

Something like:

A table of names of operatives
A table of sites/projects

Then somehow make a nice GUI which allows:

1. Data input: Choose a date, and pick from the names table, then allocate them to a project, plus time (half day or full day)
2. Add New Operative
3. Add New Project
4. Report on total time and breakdown of man days per Project

For now that would be sufficient.

The idea is every day we would enter people's whereabouts and when we want to, we can then run a report on how many man days have been spent on X project, with a breakdown of who it was by and when/how long.

Can anyone talk me through making this?

[ssanfu]

See the tutorials at: http://www.databaseanswers.org/tutorials.htm

Start with:
Database Design - Basic Approach
Data Modelling for Beginners


When designing your tables, first design on paper/whiteboard/cardboard/etc not in Access.


Then look at these two models:
Customers and Timesheets
Timesheets

[aytee111]

Is Access the best? You ask that on an Access forum, you might well get biased answers! It certainly has many advantages over other database tools and is a good place to start as it has everything all in one place. One thing is for sure - it is a thousand times better than any spreadsheet!

[Homegrownandy]

can also be linked directly to outlook to manage workers through email.

[NTC]

yes it is the right tool. Access is pretty much that last man standing in terms of PC based databases so unless you are apple based it is the correct tool. It is also very mature, stable - & because PCs now are so powerful so is Access.

talking you thru it however is probably a bit more than can be done in a forum.....

[hongman]

Hi, sorry for the delay in replying, super busy.

For now, if I start with the super basics:

I have created 2 tables:

Operative List - ID*, Operative Name
Project List - ID*, Project Name

I can create forms to make data entry a bit prettier to populate those 2 tables.

What is the next step?

What database element do I need to create in order to be able to tie those 2 together?

Ultimately I need a form which I can select an Operative, select a Project (those 2 I have covered) - then I need to be able to choose a date. How/where do I do this? I'm guessing another table with 365 dates is not the best way to do it.

Once I can do that (i.e pick a value from each table) I need to get that data into another table? Then I can report on that set of data based on filters, like (total operatives between these dates and on this project)

Am I on the right lines? Any pointers?

[Homegrownandy]

I would recommend looking on youtube for an access basics tutorial. It would explain it far better and show examples as you go.

The question you just asked would be "relationships" if you want to find a tutorial on that.

for dates.. any date field on a form will have a little calendar symbol next to it. so the user clicks that then clicks the date. This would be stored on the record.

Don't duplicate any data. don't move it to a new table unless there is no choice. Even then, you don't move the records, you use the ID's to link them. (Im sure me saying that is very confusing, that's why I recommend YouTube.)