how the heck do i do this

[mitchphoto]

this is going to be kind of hard to explain, but i'll try my best.

i work for a photographic company, and we use file maker to gather people's information at events, and we print out order forms to have sent to the people. the people fill out the paper orders and mail them to us snail mail, or call in the orders. which provides a lot of extra work on my behalf, of which most of, i know could be eliminated by making full use of filemaker. (We have used v6 up until the other day when i finally convinced my boss to buy v9 advanced for what its worth)

so now that i've explained what it's to be used for, i'll explain the current setup in slight detail...

when someone calls, or mails in an order, i have to find their photos, pull them into another directory, i also have to look at the pieces of paper where the info is and i have to make a print sheet (in excel) so i know how many of each size is needed and which image .. it looks something like this:

name, image number, 8x10, 5x7,wallets(by sheet)

alvarez, 4, 1, 1, 3

alvarez, 6, 0, 0, 3

bell, 2, 0, 0, 3

anson, 1, 1, 2, 3

first field being their name, second being the image number, and so on like described above.

when i print all of that stuff, i then go back and add up all of the packages for each person, and i put into the filemaker what they ordered:

alvarez one package D and a package H

bell one package H

anson one package D and a package J

and so on....

i could eliminate a LOT of work if i could make the filemaker an ordering system also...

there are typically 12 photos taken, and there are 12 packages. i would like for it to be to where when someone calls, i look up their database, find the info they filled out, verify it, and say "what would you like to order," and insert the number of packages they want by the photo name they want..

i have created 144 fields in a grid form

image 1 a b c d e f g h i j k l

image 2 a2 b2 c2 d2 e2 f2 g2 h2 i2 j2 k2 l2

and so on up to image 12. a-L

what i need it to do is, if someone wants a package D for image one, and they want a package D for image two,

it should print out the name, and how many 8x10's 5x7's and wallets they want PER image that they ordered...

THAT is what i dont know how to do.....

and then when the order is finished, it needs to calculate all of the packages and add up a total for them.

another note about the print sheet...

i will print out the print sheet when its time for me to do all of the printing for all of the customers from that day, which means basically that it would have to have all of the customers image numbers and image sizes listed in an excel.

one way i found that this was possible is when the order is taken, we can put the date of the order

(051508) and do a search for all of the records that say 051508 on them and theoretically export the needed data...

i know this is an earful, and without actually seeing the workflow it wont really make sense, but i guess i need a starting point..

my biggest issue right now is that i dont know how to assign variables... for example,

i need it to know that package A or "A" for short = one 16x20, two 8x10, two sheets of 5x7's, 4 sheets of wallets, a package "B" = 2-8x10, 2-5x7, 3-wallets

package G = 2 sheets wallets, J=1 sheet 5x7's and etc.

the other thing it will HAVE to account for is if someone wants image number 1 and wants both a package D and a package F at the same time for the same image... it will need to tell me how many photos those two packages = out to.........

sooooooooooooooo yeah.....

i know how to do a good share of this in php, and its even easier in asp.net, BUT... the boss wants filemaker, so the boss gets filemaker...

anyway, if anyone thinks they can help with this, i'd be happy to explain it in a more in depth manner,

or if you are someone who thinks they can program something like this, quote me on it and i'll see if the boss is willing to spring for it.

thanks in advance

[comment]

I think you need a table of Packages, a table of Formats, and a join table between them to indicate how many of each Format are in a Package.

Then you can fill an order by indicating on each line (a record in LineItems table) the ImageID and the PackageID.

That's the easy part. The hard part is consolidating the quantities for each image, when the same image can be selected in multiple packages. This has been discussed at some length here:

http://www.fmforums.com/forum/showtopic.php?tid/192677/