Is Access2002 the right choice

[Mark]

Yes, my family business wants to create an accounting database to keep
track of invoices, production, inventory, man hours, etc....

There will be two kinds of users to access the database, on two
different computers at max. (Admin and User)

The table sizes won't get too big. I am thinking 10 thousand records
at max for the biggest table. (they will be replaced each year, ie:
all the records in the tables will be removely and backed up yearly).

There will be alot of table joining to make queries to print out
reports though. I think it's called Many to Many relationships between
tables.

The question i have is will MS Access 2002 aka: MSAccessXP be able to
handle this workload if it's used for the backend and frontend? Like,
5 months later, or next year, will the Access database still work and
not give us any troubles (crashing, too slow, etc).

I have some computer programming experience and i'm willing to learn
anything new.
I don't wanna make this database too complicated because the rest of
family doesn't know computers very well.

Thanks for your help.

[RRT]

Save yourself alot of grief and buy something like quickbooks.
"Mark" <mc******@uogue lph.ca> wrote in message
news:14******** *************** ***@posting.goo gle.com...

Yes, my family business wants to create an accounting database to keep
track of invoices, production, inventory, man hours, etc....

There will be two kinds of users to access the database, on two
different computers at max. (Admin and User)

The table sizes won't get too big. I am thinking 10 thousand records
at max for the biggest table. (they will be replaced each year, ie:
all the records in the tables will be removely and backed up yearly).

There will be alot of table joining to make queries to print out
reports though. I think it's called Many to Many relationships between
tables.

The question i have is will MS Access 2002 aka: MSAccessXP be able to
handle this workload if it's used for the backend and frontend? Like,
5 months later, or next year, will the Access database still work and
not give us any troubles (crashing, too slow, etc).

I have some computer programming experience and i'm willing to learn
anything new.
I don't wanna make this database too complicated because the rest of
family doesn't know computers very well.

Thanks for your help.

[Jeremy Wallace]

An Access database, well configured, well written, and well maintained, will
have no trouble with that kind of workload.

Accounting products are all over the market. Inventory products are not too
hard to find. Time sheet applications are everywhere. Consider whether
you're family's business really needs to build their own database or whether
buying one or more products would do the job better.

Jeremy

--
Jeremy Wallace
AlphaBet City Dataworks
http://www.ABCDataworks.com
"Mark" <mc******@uogue lph.ca> wrote in message
news:14******** *************** ***@posting.goo gle.com...

Yes, my family business wants to create an accounting database to keep
track of invoices, production, inventory, man hours, etc....

There will be two kinds of users to access the database, on two
different computers at max. (Admin and User)

The table sizes won't get too big. I am thinking 10 thousand records
at max for the biggest table. (they will be replaced each year, ie:
all the records in the tables will be removely and backed up yearly).

There will be alot of table joining to make queries to print out
reports though. I think it's called Many to Many relationships between
tables.

The question i have is will MS Access 2002 aka: MSAccessXP be able to
handle this workload if it's used for the backend and frontend? Like,
5 months later, or next year, will the Access database still work and
not give us any troubles (crashing, too slow, etc).

I have some computer programming experience and i'm willing to learn
anything new.
I don't wanna make this database too complicated because the rest of
family doesn't know computers very well.

Thanks for your help.

[Larry Linson]

"Mark" wrote

Yes, my family business wants to
create an accounting database to keep
track of invoices, production, inventory,
man hours, etc....
As you have been told, there are many accounting applications available,
commercial, not too expensive, well-tested, and proven. Few of them use
Access / Jet databases; even fewer are implemented in Access. But, if you
get one that _is_, you can enhance the functionality and analyze the
business data...
The question i have is will MS Access
2002 aka: MSAccessXP be able to
handle this workload if it's used for the
backend and frontend? ...
Yes, it should.
I have some computer programming
experience and i'm willing to learn
anything new.

I am reasonably sure that you can expect to expend hundreds, if not
thousands, of hours to create a database application to do the accounting
for a complete business. But, you may want to do some additional things not
in the commercial databases, or perform analyses on the information. So here
is another option:

Visit http://www.databasecreations.com and take a look at what they have...
they have changed the name, but they have a product they used to call "Yes,
I Can Run My Business With Access" -- you get the source, so if you want to
do other things with the data, you can add them or change what is there.

There are other Access-implemented accounting databases, but I am not
familiar either with them or with the companies that do them.

Larry Linson
Microsoft Access MVP

[Saintor]

As another said, don't lose time on this when there are many products that
will do this job much better. With Quickbooks, you can have a third-party
utility to use the QB native tables. Very useful to get reports and
complete your system with customized modules.
"Mark" <mc******@uogue lph.ca> wrote in message
news:14******** *************** ***@posting.goo gle.com...

Yes, my family business wants to create an accounting database to keep
track of invoices, production, inventory, man hours, etc....

There will be two kinds of users to access the database, on two
different computers at max. (Admin and User)

The table sizes won't get too big. I am thinking 10 thousand records
at max for the biggest table. (they will be replaced each year, ie:
all the records in the tables will be removely and backed up yearly).

There will be alot of table joining to make queries to print out
reports though. I think it's called Many to Many relationships between
tables.

The question i have is will MS Access 2002 aka: MSAccessXP be able to
handle this workload if it's used for the backend and frontend? Like,
5 months later, or next year, will the Access database still work and
not give us any troubles (crashing, too slow, etc).

I have some computer programming experience and i'm willing to learn
anything new.
I don't wanna make this database too complicated because the rest of
family doesn't know computers very well.

Thanks for your help.

[(Pete Cresswell)]

RE/

Yes, my family business wants to create an accounting database to keep
track of invoices, production, inventory, man hours, etc....

Beeeeeeeg mistake. I don't want to even *think* many manhours would be wasted
re-inventing that particular wheel...and it would be a wobbly out-of-round one
at best.
Choose something from the many excellant products that are already out there.
--
PeteCresswell

[Mark]

Yes, thank you for all your replies. But i think i forgot to mention a
very important point. This program needs to be more than just an
accounting program. We own a manufacting plant and this program needs
to keep track of everything. Our goal is to automatic our processes as
much as possible. We even wanna allow the customer to login to our
website and check the status of our orders (I was thinking a perl
script for that).

Production schedules, previous quotes, inventory checks, man hours,
and how long each person spends producing each part. It has to
organize our products we produce and keep track of our whole
production process.

I looked at quickbooks and it looks very good, but i don't think it's
any different from Simply Accouting (Functionality Wise) and Simply
Accouting just couldn't do everything we wanted it to, like we
couldn't customize the look of the invoices.

Any feedback would be great if i am mistaken above. If Quickbooks can
do what i want then i will use it. Is there any way i can download a
trial version or a demo???

thanks in advance.

[Peter]

Mark,

Not to pile on, but it's going to be a lot easier and cheaper for you to
start with existing products and customize them. I've worked a fair bit with
QuickBooks, and it's not hard to get data into and out of it. The upcoming
version (QB 2004) will allow third party developers to add menu items to the
QuickBooks UI. Using this functionality you could write your own utilities
to extend QB and add them to the menu structure of QB, and have an
integrated soution. You may also be able to combine QB and add-ons developed
by others to build your own solution. QuickBooks has a manufacturing,
wholesale, and distribution edition, which may serve many or most of your
needs.

If you are talking about a larger company, or if you want a more traditional
'accounting-oriented' solution, there are many vendors and products out
there, as other posters have pointed out. Almost all allow for extensive
integration and customization. In my experience, QuickBooks is the easiest
to integrate into, but some other products have more industrial strength
accounting features, so it depends on what fits your needs better.

The things you mentioned in one of your followup posts, like customizing
invoices and building a web interface to your data are also customization
projects, not occasions for you to write the accounting system from scratch.

OT, N.B about QuickBooks: third party applications have no direct access to
the QuickBooks data store. To import or export data from QuickBooks, the
developer uses either a COM dll with methods for the various QuickBooks data
items, or sends XML files to and from QuickBooks to insert, update, read,
etc. This is not hard to do, but what it means is that not every piece of
data in QuickBooks is reachable from the outside. Some things they expose,
others stay hidden.

Anyway, back to the point of your post: it's almost certainly better to let
another vendor do the heavy lifting on the base system and then to extend
their system in the ways that fit your needs.

--

Peter
Mark wrote:

Yes, my family business wants to create an accounting database to keep
track of invoices, production, inventory, man hours, etc....

There will be two kinds of users to access the database, on two
different computers at max. (Admin and User)

The table sizes won't get too big. I am thinking 10 thousand records
at max for the biggest table. (they will be replaced each year, ie:
all the records in the tables will be removely and backed up yearly).

There will be alot of table joining to make queries to print out
reports though. I think it's called Many to Many relationships between
tables.

The question i have is will MS Access 2002 aka: MSAccessXP be able to
handle this workload if it's used for the backend and frontend? Like,
5 months later, or next year, will the Access database still work and
not give us any troubles (crashing, too slow, etc).

I have some computer programming experience and i'm willing to learn
anything new.
I don't wanna make this database too complicated because the rest of
family doesn't know computers very well.

Thanks for your help.

[Albert D. Kallal]

By the way, Simply Accounting uses the same JET engine that ms-access uses!

(Simply Accounting uses the ms-access format).

Anyway, you are talking about development of a very large system indeed.

Just the addition of web tracking and development could cost you $20,000
grand easy. Another $10,000 for the quotes system, and you don't even have
any job costing, and work flow stuff done. Integrate all of the quotes,
orders, and inventory and job costing? You are talking some serious time
expenditures. Do you have 2, or 3 years to wait while you build this system?

I would *seriously* consider purchasing a system that does all aspects of
running such a businesses. Or at least purchasing some system that is
"close" to what you need.

There are a number of "made to order" systems built for small manufacturers.
They handle orders/quotes/ customer relation management, sales force
automation. You also have stuff like inventory, and job costing to worry
about. You are talking about a lot of software here.

I would certainly consider bringing in a consultant, or someone to give you
advice. You are talking about spending $100,000+ on software here, and a few
hundred dollars on some advice certainly would make a lot of sense right
now.
--
Albert D. Kallal (MVP)
Edmonton, Alberta Canada
No************@ msn.com
http://www.attcanada.net/~kallal.msn

[David W. Fenton]

bo*****@localho st.not (Larry Linson) wrote in
<dc************ ******@nwrddc02 .gnilink.net>:

I am reasonably sure that you can expect to expend hundreds, if
not thousands, of hours to create a database application to do the
accounting for a complete business. But, you may want to do some
additional things not in the commercial databases, or perform
analyses on the information. So here is another option:

A client of mine uses MYOB for accounting and I recently
implemented ODBC connections to their MYOB accounting data in their
Access application, and it works just great (the MYOB ODBC driver
is free, too, though to use it completely you need to get an
authorization code from MYOB).

This kind of thing is very helpful in cases where the accounting
package basically serves most of your needs, but you'd like to
extend it a bit. The most likely kind of extension would be for
reporting or analysis purposes.

I can't imagine what kind of business would need more than what
products like QuickBooks provide (though QB has historically been
thought to have relatively poor inventory features, but that may
have changed in the last couple of years -- I've lost track).

--
David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton
dfenton at bway dot net http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc