Hi, I am sorry if this isn't posted in the correct section, I am new at forums. I was wondering if someone might be able to help me or guide me where to source help. I am building a database for a charitable foundation. I am looking to be able to make and print receipts for when someone makes a donation. Here is what I am looking to build and every receipt must populate or generate a new number on the page.

Foundation Logo
Name and Address of foundation

Receipt # (every receipt is by Project –so NSS2011 00001)



Received: ------$xxxx.xxx---------00/xx $____________________


Name: __________________________________

Address: The name & address have to fit into a windowed envelope so there is no need to write out the address or do up a label

Registered Charitable No.. Signed By
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx _________________________

Canada Revenue Agency Charities


We have to have duplicate receipts, probably 4 receipts to a page - Receipt original as laid out above goes to donor Same receipt so as you are filling in original the second one is populating, but this one will have a duplicate watermark on it Receipt original – 4 on a page (1 original at top, perforated/then duplicate, then another original and duplicate. I hope this makes sense and I am hoping someone might be able to help me out.

Thanks Becky.

MS Access is fine for small databases with a limited number of simultaneous users, and it has a very nice report writer built into it.
Nevertheless, what you are describing is at least "medium" difficulty level Access development. I encourage you to either take it slow, or get an experienced MS Access developer to help you if you have a deadline.
What is the charitable foundation you are building this for?

Thank you very much for your help. I am doing this for our local hospital our dadta base only has about 400 names as we are a small community and everyone volunteers there time

doens't matter, either word or Access or some other package will do the job.
Is this requirment more about presentation or do you actually need to do soemthign about the destination of the money.. ie allocating amountds to specific accounts and so on.


Thed key things you need to bear in mnd with things like receipts is that your auditors will want to see an audit trail, they like contiguous numbers. So if you do do this in a databse they do not consoider using the autonumber as an equivalent to a receipt number, autonumbers have no value or merit outside the system. some argue they should never ever be seen or used by the user in case it encourages them to do soemthing silly and use these in place of invocie, receipt GRN's and so on.

In the systems world, unless you have a specific need or volume to get special paper then the easiest way to generate a receipt is to print one off on balnk paper. if you are suign a laser printer (ideally from someone like HP) then you can differentiate the various bits of paper by using a watermark... can tricky to do in Access but its dooable. howevber I wouldnt' want to contemplate that unless the organisation used such a devioce and was committed to that device type fo rthe foreseeable future. However auditors don't neccessarily like using plain paper pritners to produce legal documents, they like to see duplicate books. with no missing pieces of paper.

I don't think what you are describing is "that" complex. there are some potnetial tricky bits, such as getting the project ID & donation ID, but those are easy enought to do. I'm sure there will be peopel here able to help you with that.

however I do think you need to talk this through with your chairity;s auditors, and if you can the government's cahrity overseer. teh latter will probably have a booklet or simialr to tell you of their concerns.

I think you need to talk it through with the organisation (your hospital) and make certain they are clear of waht they want, what you can do. one thing that both of you need to be certain of:- is this a sensible thing for you to do. One man (sorry woman) applications written in somethign like Access or Filemaker or whatever written with good intentions often tend to bite the organisation in the butt over time. the organsiation has to have a clear idea as to why this is a good idea, and you and the organisation must be clear about the lifetime of the project. unless you cna guarantee to be around for the lifetime of the project (or know that there are other peopel able to take over the maintenance) then think very carefully as to whether the project is worthwhile for the organisation.

having saud that I think what you want is achievable, but I don't know whether tis desirable for the organsiation.

She could possibly satisfy this requirement by flagging records for deletion rather than actually deleting them. This would leave contiguous values, and a clear indication as to whether records actually HAD been deleted (which is what the auditors basically care about).

now that is tricky to do in Access....