I am new to working with FileMaker Pro.

To help out a friend who works at a Park District, I am attempting to create a

Welcome Raoul!

This type of system could be fairly basic, or it could be quite complex (especially if there is scheduling involved.) But I think we'll need a bit more information to understand the scope of what you are trying to do.

1. How are Groups involved? (You said "Group Reservations Database")

2. When you are setting up reservations for a guest, are you reserving a specific time/date for a room, piece of equipment, or what? (What kind of Assets are being reserved)

3. Does the system need to check if an Asset is already reserved before allowing a reservation?

4. By "agency account information" do you mean the agency that this database is for, or is each Contact person a member of some Agency?

5. Are the Contacts the guests that are reserving things?

6. Are Contacts typically part of a Company (or Agency) where they might share some common information?

7. "payments received" sounds like billing. What is the method of this billing/payment (monthly, at time of service, Net 30)

As you can see, these things can get complicated. A good developer must understand very well how the company functions in order to answer this multitude of questions. Interviewing employees and management is usually a part of this process to help the developer gain this understanding. If you're planning to build a robust system for your aquatic friend, then you should make sure you understand her needs before proceeding too far. If you want something easy, well, that's possible too, but it won't be as powerful.