Report Consolidation

We have approximately 25 representatives that submit a marketing report that
inclludes sales call info, product categories, quantities and other pertinent
info. They currently send this to me in various formats. Some send it via
excel, some hand write it and some jot notes down on a napkin! I would like
to create a user-friendly form where they can fill in the info and I can
import it into a database for easy reporting. Does anyone have suggestions?
If this is going to be complicated I would just like to hire someone to
create the database/form and reporting tool for us. Thanks!

Kim

Is your issue that you receive data in various formats, or that you wish to
save the data in a way that allows you to "slice/dice" it? (?!or both?!)

Be aware that giving every one of your 25 representatives an Access-based
data entry screen would have some costs associated with it -- either
everyone has a copy of Access and your data-entry application, or you buy
the developer edition and send out (stripped-down) copies of Access and your
application.

Access (and Excel) have some fairly robust data import capabilities. One
approach might be to inform your reps that you require "the following ##
pieces of data (e.g., name, street address, city, state, postal code),
delivered in one of the following ## formats (e.g., Excel, text, XML, ...).

If you were assured of the data you receive, you could work out the "import"
routines (and sorry, I don't believe Access has an "import paper napkin"
data import function g).

For the next step, you'll need to provide a bit more information. "A
reporting tool" is one of the (sets of) features that Access offers. What
reports do you want to create? What data is needed for these reports? Is
there any chance you DON'T have all the data imported that you need to
create one of your reports?! Who is going to run off the reports? How
comfortable are they with Access?

And I suppose, why have you decided that Access is the tool-of-choice?!

--
Good luck

Jeff Boyce
Access MVP

"Kim" wrote in message
...
We have approximately 25 representatives that submit a marketing report
that
inclludes sales call info, product categories, quantities and other
pertinent
info. They currently send this to me in various formats. Some send it
via
excel, some hand write it and some jot notes down on a napkin! I would
like
to create a user-friendly form where they can fill in the info and I can
import it into a database for easy reporting. Does anyone have
suggestions?
If this is going to be complicated I would just like to hire someone to
create the database/form and reporting tool for us. Thanks!