I work in real estate and need to set up an advertising database. Is Microsoft Access suitable for this or what would be the best program to use?

I need to be able to charge out advertising on a weekly basis to each relevant property, e.g. the property address needs to be in the database and ideally I would like to be able to enter advertising costs for whenever this appears in the paper. I would then need to be able to get a total advertising amount for the property, but also a breakdown of the cost of each ad.

I am currently doing this in a very basic Excel worksheet, but would like a more efficient and professional way of doing it.

Any help would be much appreciated!

Cheers :)

I would said Microsoft Access should be sufficient. At least it's easy to understand and create. Access has wizard to help people who doesn't have much experience with database.

I agree that Access would be the best tool, especially if you already have it. Access can be very easy for the end user, but has a great deal of power if you want to go beneath the hood. The only real competition for Access is Filemaker Pro.

Access is also the best supported database platform. There are lots of sites where you can get advice, templates, code snippets, etc.

One key though is making sure your tables are designed properly. Based on the info provided I would envision a structure like this:

TblProperties
PropertyID (Primary Key Autonumber)
StreetAddress
City
Region
PostalCode
OwnerID (Foreign Key)

TblOwners
OwnerID (PK Autonumber)
Lastname
Firstname
StreetAddress
City
Region
PostalCode
Phonenumber

TblAds
AdID (PK autonumber)
AdDate
Duration
PropertyID
MediaID
Cost

TblMedia
MediaID (PK Autonumber)
Media
ContactFirst
ContactLast
Phone
BillingAddress
City
Region
PostalCode

That should enable you to track Ads for your properties and produce records and invoices to the owners (if you need to). This structure is independent of what database you use. It could be streamlined even more by using a single Address table and assigning an address to each entity (property, owner, media) as necessary.

Hi Scott,

Thanks for your reply to my question about advertising databases. Sorry, I could not locate a section where I could rate your answer, if I could have, it would have been "very good".

I do have Access on my computer, however I have never used it before and am having trouble getting started. I did attempt to create a table, but I have multiple advertising entries for each property and it seemed to only let me enter it once, otherwise it said something about how it couldnt duplicate it.

Any other help you could give me would be much appreciated.

Thanks
Star

You said you create a table. As I indicated you really can't do this in one table. You really need a structure like what I recommended.

I threw together a quick sample for you and attached it here.