Linking Tables and adding fields (second request)

[Adam Armstrong]

Hi all

I have a problem in that I need to manipulate data contained in a
payroll database to conform to some weird pension rules. The gross/net
pay is stored according to pay period, but the individual pay elements
are only stored on a temporary basis. For example, I have one table
called Pay, with fields for Employee ID, PayPeriod, GrossPay, NetPay,
..... and another table called VAR (for variable pay elements). The VAR
table changes every month, and doesn't maintain records according to
PayPeriod.

These tables cannot be changed as they are part of a payroll package.
However, I have created a second database that links to the payroll one.
As I need to create a record of the variable pay elements for each pay
period, I was wondering if there is a way to link the tables, but be
able to force a PayPeriod field into the data so that it doesn't
overwrite the previous pay periods details. Either that, or import the
details directly into a table, but have a query which asks for which pay
period the information relates to. Does any of this make sense?!

Any and all help would be gratefully received!

Adam

 

[Larry Linson]

I suspect you will need to import the data into a separate table... you
cannot add fields to linked tables, even if you had the required
permissions.

Even if you could, just adding such a field would not _set_ the value in the
payroll software, so it is questionable whether it would accomplish your
purpose.

Larry Linson
Microsoft Access MVP

 

[Adam Armstrong]

Larry,

Sorry, I'm not sure I made myself clear in the first post (that's
possibly why no-one replied first time round)

The linked tables pull out the relevant info from the payroll system. I
don't need to change anything in the payroll database itself. The
pension database (the new one I have created) needs to store the details
from the payroll database and additional details, hence needing an
accurate record of each months pay elements, as some are pensionable and
some aren't and we need to be able to distinguish which are which. The
payroll database only stores these on a temporary basis, and overwrites
the details each month, so I need to be able to import them into the
pensions database, adding the new field "pay period" so that we can
distinguish as to when the payments were made and report on them.

If it's not possible, then I will have to do it manually (as I am at the
moment) but I was hoping there would be an automatic way of doing it to
save me a lot of time!

Thanks

Adam