John,

The items are just what we pick up, not deliver; the list is only to give
the drivers and the dispatchers on idea of how big the loads are getting for
that day. These trucks do 6-10 pickups per day. It turns out to be several
loads per day, per truck. I don't think I would ever be searching the items,
maybe, but I'm not planning on it. The only searching is to get the grid
from the address. So, yes, I'm wondering if these other tables tblItems,
etc, all of them really, need to be linked. I mentioned this in my first
post. I really truly don't know. The way I see it, and I could be wrong,
what’s needed is some temporary storage place, temporary – from the time the
donation is called in to the time we pick it up, could be a few days, might
be several months (honestly, some churches schedule months in advance to make
sure we are there). Once the ticket is printed, at that point the whole
ticket with all of its information, goes to some table to be stored
indefinitely (I hear 7 years, for IRS purposes, but I really don’t know).
Now that table may need to be searchable. John makes a donation, files his
taxes, but two years later the IRS comes along and questions it. In the
meantime John has lost his receipt. John, or for that matter the IRS might
come to us to verify that John donated all this stuff. I can find John
easily enough, just give me his address and I’ll use the same routine as when
I found him the first time. I assume what Tom was trying to do, and what I’m
interested in doing just as an educational exersize, is to manage the data
efficiently and conveniently, and learn a little along the way. I assume
Tom’s method would be more efficient. Convenient, well, for you guys that
know this forwards and backward, maybe so, but for me, I have to really keep
my eye on the ball or I’ll loose track of what’s gong on. But, it could
prove to be interesting.


--
awsmitty


"awsmitty" wrote:

First, the overall objective. A few others and I work in a dispatch office
in a homeless shelter. (I will just be upfront about it.) We are
responsible for … scheduling the trucks to pickup donations, keeping track of
pending pickup and the expected items, and keeping track of past donations
incase the IRS questions the legitimacy.

I, for the life of me, cannot figure out the necessary tables and their
relationships. Here is what I’m thinking. There are four trucks, so,
tblTrucks, which has only one field (and an index field), trucks, A, B, C,
and D. There needs to be a table which lists the items, and there are many,
beds, sofas, lamps, bags of clothes, lawn mowers, bikes, … I have 38 items,
and a memo box to cover the loose ends, all of these would be the fields.
The records would be, for example, 1-3 bags of clothes or 6-9, 9-12, 12+, or
for beds, fields like twin, full, queen, king, crib, twin with rails,
headboard, etc. Most of these once on the final ticket, would be simple
integers, 1 sofa, 3 lamps, so most of the fields would be 1,2,3, … and the
thought is to have these ultimately put on a form as combo boxes. (I hope
this is making sense!) There is a table of map grids. The drivers navigate
via maps grids so this table contains things like street, city, zip, hundred
block, and of course, the map grid, which truck(s) covers that map grid, and
this is called tblMapGrid. So, thus far, a tblMapGrid, tblTrucks, tblItems
that the truck picks up, these items obviously are common both truck and
donor, and of course the address is also common to the donor. Which brings
us to the next to the last table, one for the donor, not much left, name,
phone(s), that’s about it, but I was also going to include on this table call
date, pickup date, ticket number, special pickup instructions, and this is
called tblPatrons. Finally the last table, which is a composite of all of
the above, tblDonations, the records of which would printed out the day of
the pickups and serve the driver, who hands it to the patron as a receipt,
which is also stored here for tax purposes. If you’re like me, I’m saying to
myself, “What a sha-bang”, but that is what I’m thinking.

I am open to criticism, suggestions, alterations, or dump the whole thing
and start over. The above is bad enough, but now the relationships. I can
see the relationship between the tblDonations and all the rest of the tables.
That’s easy, and I’m hoping that’s enough. So, envision tblDonations in the
center with four spokes coming of, on for each remaining table. Or, should
it be tblDonations related to truck, related to mapgrid, related to patron,
related to items. Or, does it really matter? I don’t want to sound stupid,
but I really don’t know. I am new; this is my very first at Access.

I think you may also need what I’m shooting for as the final “product”, or
form. I’m hoping for one form with eight tabs, tab1, given the street
address, search for and find the corresponding map grid and truck. This is
already done. Tab2, a place were the final “ticket” is prepared, This would
be temporarily stored until the date of the pickup and would be identical to
the records of tblDonations, and this table is were it would be permanently
stored. (As you can probably see, I am hoping this is done “on the fly”, in
other words, as the donor is on the phone this whole thing is filled out.)
Tab3, simple, today’s schedule, for all 4 trucks, on one form. Each record
printed off the morning of the pickup and given to the driver. Tab4, same
thing except for tomorrow. Tab5-8, the schedule for each truck as far into
the future as I can get. These may be datasheet, something I can scroll from
top to bottom.

So, there’s were I’m at. If anyone could comment on the tables, their
relationships, or just the overall structure it would be appreciated.

Thanks

I will try next time not to be so wordy, it's just that I need to remove
this from my head and put it into yours, as accurately as possible.
--
awsmitty