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Customer Database

I work for a small pool & fitness company. They have all their customer records on paper. I want to put them on a computer but I don't know the best way to do that. I've thought of ms access to create a database, but I have not done something like this before so I was looking for some advice. The information (pretty close to this) would be like:

name
date
address
phone #
zip

for patio sets:
company
fabric #
what specific set
what was all included.

so something kinda like that. Any advise would be great.

This could possibly be off topic but...

what the HELL is your avatar a picture of?

I think it's a bullet hole or something

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Shouldn't this be in coding/database area?

please keep it all on-topic

as for your question floca, it all depends on what information you want to store about the customer. If it is just the information that you list there then you could just put all of that in a table, and start using it.
I would however reccomend putting a "Customer ID" field with a AutoNumber, and put that as a primary key, it makes it easier for searching the database when there is a unique field for each customer.

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It's hard to design a database with the known infomation as "The information (pretty close to this) would be like:". You would need to know all the data, and extend on that to such things as, does the customer have multiple address's? multiple phone numbers? does a patio have more than one fabric?

It depends on how detailed or complex you want it to be. You could do a very simple database which sure, it stores the required info, but isnt really expandable and isn't very productive. Or you could design a really complex database which is expandable and productive, but is it nesscery?

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Just use MS Excell, or if you want it online you could use a MySQL database.

Originally posted by bas:

Just use MS Excell, or if you want it online you could use a MySQL database.

an Access database would do the job better than excell, and then he could also put it online using the same database..

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I agree with Advocation on this one, Access would be good

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Thanks for the information. It doesnt need to be expandable or overly complicated. Just enough to have a way for them to search through their records so when someone that bought something 10 years ago needs it fixed they can verify it was bought there. I wasnt sure if anyone had done something like this. I didnt want to start doing it using access when there might be something easier and better to use.

the avatar is a photoshopped picture of my finger after the tip was cut off.
http://smug.uwstout.edu/damon/fingergallery/images/DSCN0027.jpg
http://smug.uwstout.edu/damon/fingergallery/images/DSCN0031.jpg

As for off-topic posts in my threads, I dont mind at all.