importing recurring CSV data - do I need a script?

[nedzb]

Hello,

I'm a relative newbie to relational database design so my apologies in advance. I'm putting together a database to help me track my business expenses, all taken from my monthly CSV credit card data dumps. Many of my expenses will be recurring, i.e. they'll be from the same vendor but sometimes from different addresses. Example: Home Depot has several stores we use. I want to track how much is spent at each store. The same is true for a variety of other types of stores we use.

So, I've set up my little vendor table with a key field, vendor name field, and vendor address. The question is how can I get Filemaker to check the table to see if the vendor at that address exists before creating a record during the CSV import? I don't want to end up with 100+ records for the same Home Depot store.

I think a script will be required but I'm at a loss as to how to write it. Could someone suggest a tutorial, either online or in a book, to which I can turn?

Thanks!

[Wim Decorte]

Couple of ways of doing this:

- the FM import has a "update" feature. Check it out in the help file to see if this would work for you. This would identifiy (and update) existing records and create new ones for records you don't already have

- or import into a dummy table and then have a script loop through each imported record and check them against your vendor table

[nedzb]

Thanks for the reply.

I'd like to automate the process so that means a script. Can you, or anyone, point me to a good tutorial that would help me write the script? I've been working with ScriptMaker but can't ID which functions would ID the vendor's name, compare it with names already in the vendor table, and then choose to import the record or delete it.

Thanks!