work order form and report design help

[Jimmy]

I am building an automotive shop database. I have a table that lists all of
the services and the prices. I have the main form created where all of the
customer data is entered in and I have another form that builds the work
order for the customer. How do I build the form to allow for different
services for the same customer without having to create service type 1,
service type 2, etc. I need them to be independent of each other and I then
need to create a report to print out for the customer.

 

[John W. Vinson]

I am building an automotive shop database. I have a table that lists all of
the services and the prices. I have the main form created where all of the
customer data is entered in and I have another form that builds the work
order for the customer. How do I build the form to allow for different
services for the same customer without having to create service type 1,
service type 2, etc. I need them to be independent of each other and I then
need to create a report to print out for the customer.

STOP.

You're jumping to the form *too early*. You need to get your table design
right first, before you start working on Forms; and to do so you need to
understand the relational paradigm.

This case is very much like the Northwind sample database that comes with
Access. One Customer can have many Jobs (surely you want return business) - so
you need a table of Customers related one-to-many to a table of Jobs (with a
CustomerID, a date, and so on). Each Job can involve many Services (oil
change, rotate tires, replace leaky vacuum hose...); each Service may occur in
many different Jobs (you'll change the oil for lots of customers). So you need
a third table, JobDetails, with a link to the Jobs table and to the Services
table.

Take a look at some of these resources, particularly the tutorials toward the
end:

Jeff Conrad's resources page:
http://www.accessmvp.com/JConrad/accessjunkie/resources.html

The Access Web resources page:
http://www.mvps.org/access/resources/index.html

Roger Carlson's tutorials, samples and tips:
http://www.rogersaccesslibrary.com/

A free tutorial written by Crystal:
http://allenbrowne.com/casu-22.html

A video how-to series by Crystal:
http://www.YouTube.com/user/LearnAccessByCrystal

MVP Allen Browne's tutorials:
http://allenbrowne.com/links.html#Tutorials