I'm setting up a program to track payment records for a martial arts school. Payment plans fall into 3 categories: paid in full, six installments, or twelve installments. I enter each payment as a new record (shifting constantly among all the students), but would like the Payment Plan field to pop up for the correct number of installments, and another field to track which number installment it is. Any suggestions?

Off the top of my head, I'd consider doing this:

I assume that payments are for a term of tuition (however long a "term" is does not matter -- a week, month or quarter as long as it is consistent).

I can see three entities: people, terms, and payments with a one-to-many relationship between people and terms, and a one-to-many relationship between terms and payments. (In other words, terms is a join file between people and payments.)

In "People" each record is a unique person. In "Term" each record is a term of tuition. In "Payments" each record is a payment of money.

This structure will allow you to track which terms the person has enrolled for, and how much they have paid. It can cope with split payments for terms.