How to set up duplicate fields for one record

[Susan4730]

I'm new to Access. I have taken a beginner online class to learn and I start the intermediate class next week. I work at a small resource center and food pantry. I want to set up a new data base to keep track of donations. I know how to set it up if each person only donated once a year but we have donors that donate multiple times a year. I'm not sure how to set it up to keep track of all the check numbers, dates, amounts and designations for the donation. Any help appreciated.
Thanks, Susan

[davegri]

Microsoft has a free charitable contributions template for Access. It's one of the selections on the screen when you start Access.

[Micron]

did they dive right in to how to make things in Access or did they start with the foundation of normalization and entities/attributes in a relational database? This

I'm not sure how to set it up to keep track of all the check numbers, dates, amounts and designations for the donation

suggests they did not teach those concepts. A template will get you going but won't teach you much about the principles at play.
In fact, knowing M$, they will use things in templates that don't follow those principles - things that you'd be better off avoiding, like multi value fields, table lookup fields and navigation forms - unless you understand the ramifications of those and use them anyway.

[Susan4730]

It started with the basics but is was a beginner class. If each donor only donated one time a year I can set that up. I just don't know how to add additional donations to that record without erasing the original donation. At the first of the year we have to mail out a list to each donor of the year's donations (each check number, date and amount). We are a tax deductible nonprofit charity and receipts have to be sent out so they can be deducted from their taxes.
The beginner and intermediate classes I am taking are part of the ed2go classes. These were created by the two people that wrote the "Access 2016 for Dummies" book.

[moke123]

At the very least you need 2 tables. A one Donor to many Donations scenario.

A table of Donors which contains a DonorID (primary Key) and all their info (name, address, etc)
A table of Donations with a DonationID (primary key), a foreign key for the DonorID, and the details of the donations(date, amount, payment type, etc.)

What does your table structures look like?

Your main form would be based on the Donor table and a continuous sub-form based on the Donations table with a master/child link on the DonorID.

[Micron]

maybe you will find a schema here that you can work with

http://www.databaseanswers.org/data_models/