Updating records without loosing the old ones

[Ugo DI LUCA]

There are two points I'm really stuck with in Relational DB :

How can I avoid any modification to a specific record in a DB (i.e. Invoices) ? Is it possible to keep one set of invoices locked ?

How can I keep the old records when I update them ?

Customers often changed their minds and modify their orders. I want to keep a "copy" of their first orders in case of contestation.

This leads to another question. Is it possible to put some datas in an Archived DB in FM ? Or is there other ways some of you deal with?

Thanks

[jasonwood]

Every morning, in the store I work with, they run a script which locks all of the previous day's invoices so that persons with "normal" access priveleges can't modify them. This can be accomplished with a simple "Locked" field with value "YES" if you want it locked.

When you set up access priveleges, you can restrict a user to modify only records where Locked != "YES"

-----btw... this only works in FileMaker 5.5 and later to my knowledge.

Not sure exactly what you mean by modifying orders. Normally if a customer wants to modify an order, and you AGREE to change it... there's no issue with contestation since you agreed to the change. I must be missing something.

[Ugo DI LUCA]

I'm glad to know about that new feature of FM. I only used the 5.5 version for some weeks, and didn't know about it. It surely change a lot my first question.

For what concern the Customer Order, not only they contest, but they do negociate a lot.

In fact, this is mostly the problem.

I run a DB that has a "Proposal and Quotes DB" and a "Customer Order DB". I use that last one either for editing "Customer Orders" (to be confirmed/different from Proposal and Quotation though) and the definitive "Customer Orders" . The changes from the first one could be quantiy or price, or even the product itself (in that last case, I create a new Order).

The fact is I need to save a "copy" of the first order form.

By the way, I want to thank you for your suggestions about "masking fields in a layout".

I also used an adm layout and a regul layout but as a seller I needed to know immediately if I could sell at that price or not, without showing the client my adm layout with all the confidential datas it runs.

I run the solution for one week now, and I appreciate it. Many thanks though...