database that contains employee travel details

[AJ]

I have an excel spread sheet that contains employees business travel details
with the headings: Traveller; Travel Date; Cost Centre; Division; Airport 1;
Airport 2; Airport 3; Airline; Stadard Fare, Fare Offered; Fare Paid; Taxes;
Savings accepted; Savings Declined.

I would like to know if it is worthwhile in creating a database that that
will allow me to produce reports such as 'who' 'when' 'where' etc.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

 

[Ed Warren]

First you will want to 'normalize' your data. Databases are not Excel.
you will want tables something like
Personnel
PersonnelID *key
stuff about people
Divisions
DivisionID *key
stuff about divisions
Trips
TripID *key
DateStart
DateEnd
CostCenter
Division
ReasonForTrip
Other Stuff about the trip
TripsLegs (1:M) to Trips
TripLegId *key
TripID *foreign key
Departure date\time
DepartureAirport
Arrival Date\time
ArrivalAirport
other stuff about the leg



Where you put the info about taxes and fairs depends on your information
model, could be as part of a tripleg, if it that is the way you need to
store it or it could be part of the overall trip (total amounts). You may
also want to keep some information about lodging and lodging costs and misc
costs related to parking\ taxi's \ tips\meals


Ed Warren.