How do I create a database for reporting of weekly invoicing?

[Guest]

I would like to create a database for reporting of weekly invoicing & orders,
by region. Currently, we use Excel to do this, but I would like to do it in
Access, as it will be more useful and flexible. How do I set up the basic
table...is it a table called "Invoicing" with fields for "week" (ie weeks 1 -
52), and "region", or do I set it up in some other way? Thank you for your
help.

Sincerely,
Steven S.

 

[John Vinson]

I would like to create a database for reporting of weekly invoicing & orders,
by region. Currently, we use Excel to do this, but I would like to do it in
Access, as it will be more useful and flexible. How do I set up the basic
table...is it a table called "Invoicing" with fields for "week" (ie weeks 1 -
52), and "region", or do I set it up in some other way? Thank you for your
help.

That's a decent spreadsheet design - and a VERY bad database design.

You *never* want to store data (dates, regions) in fieldnames.
Instead, you need a "tall-skinny" table with one record per invoice.
This table would have fields for the date (or the week, if you insist;
you can always calculate the week number from the date), for the
region, and for any other fields you need in the invoice.

Since I have no idea what your actual requirements are, it's hard to
be specific. Try reading up on database design, especially in the
"Database Design 101" links on Jeff's resources page:

Jeff Conrad's resources page:
http://home.bendbroadband.com/conradsystems/accessjunkie/resources.html

The Access Web resources page:
http://www.mvps.org/access/resources/index.html

John W. Vinson[MVP]