Contract Database

[Gina Whipp]

Hope someone can help....

I was asked to create a contract databse, however, there are over 100
contracts with a minimum of 5 pages, each page containing at least 10
sections. Each section would have to be stored seperately in addition to
the various changes made to each section. I'm thinking this is not an
Access project but a VB one... Any comments? (Oh, presently the contracts
are in Word and they want each section password protected based on the User
which as far as I can tell cannot be done in Word.)

 

[Duane Hookom]

Sounds like a sophisticated document management system application to me.
Not something you will create with MS Office.

 

[Ernie]

First off, I would look for a document management system
which would do all of this for you.

If, however, you really want to try and do this in access,
I would set up tables as follows:

tblContract
ContractID (primary key)
SectionID (foreign key to section table)
ModSectionID (foreign key to modifications to standard
section info)
Other information

tblSection
SectionID (primary key)
SectionName (brief name for the type of info in section)
SectionDefinition (a memo field with the exact wording
in a contract)

tblModSection
same as above to store modifications to a standard
contract section (change the name of the fields slightly)

tblCustomers
CustomerID
Customer details
ContractID


tblCustomers will have a many to many relationship with
the tblContract so you may need a separate table to show
the links between them

Instead of memo fields for the section information, you
could use links to your word documents.

Also, you could store section info and modified section
info in the same table with a flag to show whether it is
standard or modified.

Don't concern yourself over pages, any number of sections
can appear on any number of pages. When printing out a
full contract you will need to make sure that the sections
are printed in the correct order and only once per
contract.

As far as password security, you should only need to ask
for a password to load the app and maybe another one for
each customer. Asking for a password for every section of
every contract is pushing it. Look into the security forum
of this newsgroup for information on adding security.

 

[Gina Whipp]

Thanks Duane just what I thought!

Thanks Ernie,

I knew HOW to set it up, I was just curious the responses I would get. I
already sent the company looking for me to do this several document
management software links (related to contracts) and they are looking into
it. I moved on to the next project in my que