New Database. Need Help!

[Guest]

Hi. I'm running into quite a mess with my database here. I had to create
one to track payment plans for accounts that have been delinquent. It has to
show the base amount, total amount with penalties and interests, payments
made, etc.

What I did was I created multiple date & payment fields to track the
payments, i.e., date1, payment1, date2, payment2, etc. Now, what they want me
to do is to find a way to "group" the payments for a certain date and total
them. This is where I am stuck. How can I make it group ALL the payments
for ALL accounts and total them for one specific date?

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

 

[Jeff Boyce]

The structure you created works great, but only in spreadsheets. Access, as
a relational database, requires a different approach ... check up on
"normalization".

An approach that will make better use of Access' features/functions might be
something like:

tblPayment
PaymentID (an autonumber would work for this, a primary key)
Amount
AccountID (a foreign key, pointing back to your Account table)
PaymentDate

With a design like this, you can find all the payments made on a certain
date, or over a range of dates, with a simple query.

Regards

Jeff Boyce
Microsoft Office/Access MVP