FileMaker Bookkeeping

[Amram Chayim Eirinberg]

Hi All,

I’m in the planning stage of extending my company’s database system to include bookkeeping.

I will need 4 basic fields, 1) Bills, 2) Payment to Supplier, 3) Receivables, 4) Customer Payment.

My question is, should I have all these fields in two tables 1 for the supplier side (Bills & Payment) and 1 for the customer (Receivables & payment), or should I have an individual table for each of these field?

I’d love to hear your suggestions especially if you have some experience in Bookkeeping in FileMaker,

Thanks

Amram Chayim Eirinberg

[FMWorx]

You keep saying adding just four fields? I believe you mean four "tables"? Asking us to help with how many of anything that you might need is a daunting task, as none of us know how your company bookkeeping system is setup. And depending on what country you are in, throws in another roadblock. I'm sure someone here will give you some basic info to help get you started, but only "you" can make it work for your solution.

[David McQueen]

Hi All,

I’m in the planning stage of extending my company’s database system to include bookkeeping.

I will need 4 basic fields, 1) Bills, 2) Payment to Supplier, 3) Receivables, 4) Customer Payment.

My question is, should I have all these fields in two tables 1 for the supplier side (Bills & Payment) and 1 for the customer (Receivables & payment), or should I have an individual table for each of these field?

I’d love to hear your suggestions especially if you have some experience in Bookkeeping in FileMaker,

Thanks

Amram Chayim Eirinberg

Sounds like you are planning one table for individual line items. If you are doing that a better strategy would probably be one field for money and one flag field for the type of money(Income, expense, bill....). You would then use other flags for various items like status "Paid" etc.

Then you could get various reports out of that table using calculated fields - Income and expense, accounts receivable etc.

If you are using this approach you will still need at least one other table for invoicing and payment where multiple line items are brought together under a parent table umbrella.You will probably need it at the expense side too.

I have used this approach in Little Helper 2 to give a very basic bookkeeping system for startups and small business just because of the ease of reporting. I am not sure how well this "tables within a table" setup would work for a more complicated system.I did not stray far from just providing what a small entrepreneur would need prior to going to the accountant. The goal was not to be comprehensive but to provide an omnibus program to give a small business an affordable tool set where they could pick and choose the functions they wanted to use.

If you needs are great, you would probably be well advised to hammerlock the company accountant into a chair for a few days and do out and entity attribute diagram mirroring the companies current system + have a really good idea of the current deficiencies of that system. Then start designing with that in mind. I am guessing that this will cause a far more complicated multi table system to be designed.Comprehensive accounting packages in general are not simple and not small.

Just a few thoughts.

Edited June 16, 2010 by Guest

[RodSierra]

I would not go one step into this without your accountant, its best in the beginning to start with someone that knows the specific requirements, and there are very specific requirements with regards to accounting.