I have an excel workbook I use to keep track of stock and all the daily transactions that take place in my business. It works well, but as it has grown its become a bit slow. Its also pretty complex, using a huge amount of formula's to keep track of the stock taken from invoices, warranties, ect, ect. This makes changing the workbook kinda stressful, because I have mistyped a formula once or twice, causing huge havoc when stock does not balance a the end of the day, or, the cash up does not balance. Its also getting a bit slow, sometimes taking up to two minuts to calculate the vb on opening.
I asked someone who knows more about excel than myself how to streamline it and I was told that I have outgrown excel and that I should convert to a database. Its also sitting at about 20 mb.
Now what he said was convert, but I'm sure what I will need to do is to redo the whole thing in some kind of database.
Now my question. What database should I be looking at?
The spreadsheet (along with two other programs) is one of the major things holding me from converting my business to Ubuntu. I have tried to run the spreadsheet in OpenOffice, but it crashes after a bit. Also (obviously) none of the vb works. Calc, I think, is just a little light for the workbook.
The database seems simple to me:
It needs to keep track of:
Invoices (not actual invoicing just a record of them)
Credit notes
Stock
Warranties
Purchases (from one major supplier)
Daily expenses (soap and other such stuff)
I would need the stock from the purchases to go into stock and the stock from the invoices to be removed from stock, we also need the scraps we receive on the invoice to received into stock.
I would also need to be able to put in a payment method so I could cash-up at the end of the day.
There are a couple of other simple things, but that's the gist of it.
As it is now, I keep a spreadsheet for every month so I can go back and have a look at the cashup for the 5th of February 09 and see exactly what happened. An issue with that is that anyone could go back and edit it (in the current month).A Database would sort that out.
MySQL seems like the obvious answer, but I don't know any SQL. I have looked at OOo's Base, but since I have not worked with databases before it seems a bit over my head, and there is little documentation on it. I have done a tutorial or two and tho they tell you what to do, they don't say why so its impossible for me to adapt that to anything I want to do.
I'm sure I could get Access to work, but I'm trying to get away from MS.
Am I taking on something I won't be able to do? Should I just stick to excel?
Or redo it to work with OOo's Calc?
I asked someone who knows more about excel than myself how to streamline it and I was told that I have outgrown excel and that I should convert to a database. Its also sitting at about 20 mb.
Now what he said was convert, but I'm sure what I will need to do is to redo the whole thing in some kind of database.
Now my question. What database should I be looking at?
The spreadsheet (along with two other programs) is one of the major things holding me from converting my business to Ubuntu. I have tried to run the spreadsheet in OpenOffice, but it crashes after a bit. Also (obviously) none of the vb works. Calc, I think, is just a little light for the workbook.
The database seems simple to me:
It needs to keep track of:
Invoices (not actual invoicing just a record of them)
Credit notes
Stock
Warranties
Purchases (from one major supplier)
Daily expenses (soap and other such stuff)
I would need the stock from the purchases to go into stock and the stock from the invoices to be removed from stock, we also need the scraps we receive on the invoice to received into stock.
I would also need to be able to put in a payment method so I could cash-up at the end of the day.
There are a couple of other simple things, but that's the gist of it.
As it is now, I keep a spreadsheet for every month so I can go back and have a look at the cashup for the 5th of February 09 and see exactly what happened. An issue with that is that anyone could go back and edit it (in the current month).A Database would sort that out.
MySQL seems like the obvious answer, but I don't know any SQL. I have looked at OOo's Base, but since I have not worked with databases before it seems a bit over my head, and there is little documentation on it. I have done a tutorial or two and tho they tell you what to do, they don't say why so its impossible for me to adapt that to anything I want to do.
I'm sure I could get Access to work, but I'm trying to get away from MS.
Am I taking on something I won't be able to do? Should I just stick to excel?
Or redo it to work with OOo's Calc?
