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Designing Your Program
The more you participate in the design and work phases, the less your bill will be and the happier you will be with the final result.
Click here to download a sample design.
Pre-design phase:
Fax or mail copies of all reports or input screens you have available. If possible, outline what you want your program to do. The more detailed you are, the better. If you do not have time to do this, we will be happy to assist you. If you can, sketch your input screens and reports. The more written documentation you provide, the better.
Design phase:
Data. For each data file (referred to as "tables"), we need the following
-a list of the tables Use sensible names such as "customer" for customer
- describe each table
- include lookup tables (example: department table)
- estimate of the number of records in each table (if you have 100 customers, you will have 100 records in the "customer" table).
- list fields ("name" is a field; "state" is a field). Use sensible names
- give the maximum length of each field
-if field is numeric, number of positions to the right and left of the decimal point
-a complete description of each field and the rules which must be applied to it. Such as:
- Do not allow duplicate values(e.g. no duplicate customer numbers)
- Force all upper-case
- Restrict values (e.g. no salary below "$0" or above "$100,000" ) or restrict value of "status" code to "Open", "Closed" or "Inactive."
- Get value from lookup table (e.g. get department code from department table)
- Calculate value of "Total” (e.g. Total = hourly rate times number of hours)
Screens:
If you know how to create screens with, for example, MS Access, do so. Or you can use a word processor such as MS Word to create screens.
- Include field labels (Customer: ______________) "Customer" is the label and the underscores represent a place to enter data
- Be sure to use the font type and font size you want. MS Sans Serif is the standard font used by MS Access. The standard font size is 8.
Menus:
Sketch or use a word processor to design the menu system
Reports:
Sketch or use a word processor to design each report
- Give list of fields to select for report
- Give record selection rules. (e.g. all customers who have purchased at least $100 from us in the last 30 days in the state of Michigan)
- Give record sort order (e.g. sort by city and within city, amount of purchase with highest amounts first)
Special programs
Link to QuickBooks or other accounting programs
Link program to our web-site
Generating output files for other purposes (e.g., excel or CVS files)
Automatic e-mail
Automatic faxing
Why not contact us now. Even if you are just “thinking about” improving your business with custom programming, contact us to begin a dialogue. We will not pressure you in any way. Your phone number and e-mail address will not be shared with others.
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