In that case sounds a lot simpler, particularly if simultaneous use is
not a problem.
Just need to break it down into what "things" you are dealing with...

samples
customers
analyses
tests (sample+analysis)

I would try to keep all of your data together - once you start
splitting up your data you'll find it gets much more difficult to
track what's at what stage in the system. You could decide to have
some kind of "archive" cutoff for samples for which all tests are run
and bill sent at least "X" months ago.

Even for this samll a system a database would be useful, but you can
probably make do in Excel.

For reporting and work orders you can just format some worksheets to
serve as templates.

Tim.



"Greg Wilson" wrote in message
...
Thanks Tim for responding.

How many samples/tests (per month or year) ?
Very roughly 3 or 4 tests per day. This can vary dramatically
however.

How many different types of analysis ?
Very many. The complexities of analysis including reporting are
already
handled by other programs. However, these other programs are test
specific.
They don't manage the lab. The program described is mainly to serve
as a a
sample record including tests to be done with a few other "bells and
whistles", in particular whether tests have been billed as well as
tracking
samples so they don't pile up or get disposed of prematurely.
Tracking how
long samples have been held and charging a storage fee discourages
arbitrary
saving of samples which is currently a serious problem.

Do you also need to be able to track test results ?
No. This is done by existing programs. Test results are mailed and
copies go
to files. We might want to expand the program to indicate whether
formal
reports are required and if they have been sent.

What would you consider "inexpensive" (1k/10k/100k) ?
Management is very capricious on this issue. Depends if it's
managements
idea or a slaves (read me). If it's a slaves idea, 1k max. Else 10k
mabe but
not likely. So 1k max is likely it.

The need to be able to access the system from 1 PC and the types
of
information being tracked seem to point towards a database back-end
(maybe
with an Excel UI).
I was intending to do this exclusively with Excel. I don't have any
programming experience with Access. If we average, say, 4 tests per
day, then
this would amount to roughly 900 tests per year. I think we should
start a
new record for each year.

Access may be enough for the DB if your capacity doesn't need to be
too
large and there aren't too many concurrent users.
As I said, I'm an amateur programmer. I do my studies and
experimenting
exclusivley at home where there isn't an intranet. So I'm not sure
about the
file sharing problem. I don't expect it to be left open too long and
usually
it's the same people creating the WO's and tracking things.

Thanks again Tim for taking the time.

Best regards,
Greg