New to Base. Need help!

[aujwhite]

I have a very detailed spreadsheet that I use for tracking sales at our different offices by different employees. I think that it will be easier to keep this data in a database but can’t seem to wrap my head around how to set it up. I have never used a database program before and the tables and queries and reports have me puzzled. Here’s how my spreadsheet is set up:

Customer Name, Product Sold, # Units, Date, Price, Location, Employee

There would be about 10 different options for product sold, 9 different locations, and 7 different employees.
I am thinking that I should have separate tables for products, location and employee and they should relate back to a main “sales” table that would have all of the fields listed above. Is that correct or would I be able to get all the information from just making one table with the fields listed above?

The information I would like to be able to pull (and currently track on my spreadsheet) is:

1. Number of Units by product
2. Total $ sold by product
3. Average sale price of each product
4. Monthly summary which includes Net Units, Net $ sold, and ASP for the month

Thanks in advance!
J

[Ratslinger]

Specifically answering this question is not for this forum. It encompasses a great deal. What you should do is go the the Base documentation located on the TDF site - click here. A little further down that page are also documents on Planning & Designing your Database. That should get you started.

If you do have specific questions, please feel free to ask here in a new question.

If this answers your question please click on the (upper left area of answer).

[EasyTrieve]

Suggest you not proceed. Rather suggest you tinker w/ Base for awhile first to see how it works. Then once you get a feel of what you can do with it (not what it can do, but what you can figure out) give it a go. Databases are quite different from spreadsheets. If you’ve never learned about databases before there is much to learn before you can do complex things. Databases solve one problem that spreadsheets fail at: size. A database can grow to a huge size. Also a database can be relational more easily and more capably. There are probably other much better tutorials to teach you about relations that I could do Justice to the subject in a few words, so find a good book or web site on databases to get started. Also know that there are other types of databases, like node based databases which can create mesh structures, and simple but huge, property/value databases like what Amazon is based on which are elastic and can flow across hardware more easily as they become huge.