How do I enter a product number and have the description auto fill

[Guest]

I am looking for a way to enter an item number on a customer's invoice, and
have the description and price automatically fill in. Does anyone know which
Microsoft office product I should use for this? And if so, which steps I
would take to create this? The invoice I am currently using is in Excel.
Can I set this up in Access?

Thank you in advance to anyone replying to this question. It's been a poser
for me.

 

[Guest]

Hi

You can eaisily use access for this - but it will tak a while to master the
basics and build your database.

Regarding you question

I am looking for a way to enter an item number on a customer's invoice, and

Just looking at this I would say you would need 2 tables Items and
Customers. Each table would contain information that is unique to either a
particular Item or a particular Customer.
These would be something like
Customer
IDnumber, 1st Name, Surname, adddress, plus other information
Item
IDnumber, Discription, Cost, Tax rate, Location, plus other info

As you can see it is important to access that each record within a table
contain Unique information regarding the "Very" specific set of information.
As an example there may be many John Smith's so each customer is not known
(by the database) by their name but rather by a unique number (ID) access has
a facility to provide this will a format called an autonumber. The same
applies to Items as you may have many Items so each Item is given a unique ID.

It is the realtionship between these ID fields that (to put it simply) allow
access to function. You could select a customer and have the details show up
on a screen - print invoices - or many of many many many other actions.

OK then my advice - for what it is worth - if you want to send our invoices
to your customers this week (or next) then use excell (as you already have
this set up. BUT if you are prepared to put in a little time in study then I
think access would be a better option.

You can work you way through a short course (have a look around this forum
as there are many recomendations regarding good books) that should enable you
to do the tasks you want and you can always put specific questions on this
formum (it may take some time for an answer but it normally comes in the end)


Hope this helps

 

[Nikos Yannacopoulos]

The MS-Office product for the job is definitely Access, but by your
question I take it you are not familiar with it. If I'm right about
this, then it will take you quite some time and effort to set up
something that works satisfactorily, even if you start by modifying
Northwind (a sample application that comes with Access), rather than
from scratch. That's because Access is a completely different "animal"
to any other Office product (even though some tend to think it's a turbo
charged spreadsheet app, which is completely wrong), and has a steep
learning curve.
Note that I am not aiming to disappoint you, just to warn you! Starting
out with Access is not a walk in the park, so either you're determined
(and patient) and invest some time and effort into something that you
will benefit from on other occasions as well in the future, or, if you
just need this one thing and are not prepared to put much energy into
it, better look for a ready commercial app, or commission someone to
develop it for you.

HTH,
Nikos