Hello,

I have been working on this database table design for about a month or so.
Finally had some slower period here, so I proceeded to diagram it all out.
And with the help in these newsgroups, this one in particular, I believe I
might have my design finished.

However, when I try to use the Relationship screen where you relate all the
tables, the lines connecting all the tables get so convoluted that I can't
really see what goes where. :-)  I suppose if I was to drag it out to take a
couple of pages, it might make the lines more sensible, but instead I chose
to just put the designing of the tables in an Excel spreadsheet.  By doing
this I could layout all the tables, the field names, which fields from other
tables will need to be related to that table, and really see if there were
any further breakdowns or tables that I needed to have.

Things we need to accomplish:
1) Our internal item number
2) Vendor internal item number
3) Many items per vendor, and many vendors per item
4) List of all items used per
boat/task/primary/secondary/major/minor/employee
5) List of all tasks used in a project and only those tasks used in the
project
6) Allow saving of prices historically (prices change from
purchase/invoice/next reorder
7) Compiled invoice of items used per boat.  (Note: Not an accounting
system, the invoice being generated is so we have a record of what is used
per boat and we bill what has been used per billing cycle.  A/P will
continue to use Quickbooks for invoicing, but they will use these generated
invoices for totals and listings of items used.
8) Totals/Reports of how much in man hours (forgot a field for hours in the
employee table - ooops@!), how much (dollars) in parts used so far, per task
for extra change orders, and to have a more clear picture for insurance
coverage of outgoing material and labor used per boat.
9) No plans to put accounting as a part of this database as of yet.  There
is no tracking of inventory so no adjustment fields are needed for keeping
inventory counts.
10) Purchasing/Invoicing made easier for what we buy and what we use.

Those are some of the key elements for which I think I covered.  The only
thing I see missing now that I write this is the need to add an Hours
field(s).  I need to keep track of how many hours per boat/task/insurance
purposes.

Here is a link to the design I came up with;

Note: This link will not work until after May 4th @ 06:00 PM PST.  I need to
upload from my home to our website after work.

http://www.howardmoe.com/ourtable.htm

Top 3 lines in yellow are the table description and table name.
Purple line with the word 'Done' in each column was just a placemark to let
me know when I did them all and everything was complete.

The light blue fields are fields that are used in a relationship to another
field.  At the bottom of a column, if there are field names there, they are
what will go in the locations above where the link in blue is identified.  I
wanted to show the link in blue so I know what to link to when I build the
tables in Access; yet have a real field name for it when it comes to that
point.

If you are inclined to review the tables and comment with suggestions or
mistakes, I am all ears.  This is my first Access database so I am not
perfect.

Thank you,

Tim