Access Vs Excel

[Kurupt55]

Sorry about the title didnt know how to describe what i wanted.

So here is my issue I have been asked to design a capacity planning tool and have been throwing around ideas on how to go about it.
I have made one before in Excel which worked fine until it came time to add more fields and options.
This solution has to be able to store multiple Staff member details with a skills matrix for various skills (I have done this part in Access)
Then it needs to store Projects Data with budget ($ and Hours) location and various other data. I will probably do this in Access too.
The problem arises when I then have to design a solution for team leaders to allocate staff members to a certain project for a certain amount of hours per week.
This needs to validate against the budgeted hours for the job and the maximum hours the staff member can work

So my question is... is there a way to do this easily in Access with instant feedback on the validation of the hours or should i use Access and Excel combined?

Sorry if this is far too vague let me know if you need more info.

Thanks

Impossible is Nothing

 

[traycee]

Access is best used anytime you have a one to many relationship. For example, one staff member to a variety of skills matrix. If the tables and flow of data are designed properly this is very doable but if you're not well versed in Access this could be a daunting task.

 

[SkipVought]

Hi,

worked fine until it came time to add more fields and options.

Hmmmmmm. Was your design just flat incomplete, or what was it tha had to be added fieldwise?

But generally speaking, Excel is not the place to run such a system. A spreadsheet application is not designed to run a database.

That being said, designing & building a capacity planning tool, is a 'daunting' task in any database application.

Skip,
[sub]
Just traded in my old subtlety...
for a NUANCE![/sub]

 

[Kurupt55]

What im struggling with in Access (and yes im not very well versed in the program) is I want to be able to assign A staff member to a Job for say 50% of the week and 20% of next week, but rather than doing it individually I want to have a table where I can see all staff and all projects and get instant feedback as to how many hours have been allocated to project X and how many hours Joe Bloggs has left to assign.
Is this possible in Access?

Impossible is Nothing

 

[traycee]

Yes. It is absolutely possible using access but pretty much impossible if you haven't already been designing access databases. It wouldn't be anyone's first design project.