The FileMaker website says FM provides several templates for small businesses. How can I access these templates and what version of FM do I need?

Hi Michael and Welcome to the FM Forums,

 

Your FileMaker application came with some starter templates, including some for Business. You can access these templates by choosing the option when creating a new database New, Using a Starter Solution. 

 

Beyond that, you can find lots of demos of different kinds of things in a lot of places. I would start by doing a Google Search for the keywords you would use to describe what files you want.

 

Additional information about what kind of business you ware looking for could help us help you better.

 

One more thing, I believe you might be interested in looking at the files here. LINK

 

HTH

 

Lee

Thanks to you, Lee. This brings me to the next question: suppose I find a starter solution I can use but I need to populate its database with the business's existing FM data for the customers it already has. Is there a way to move data from one solution to another (perhaps with SQL-like queries?).

If you find one of the starter solutions that almost suits the needs of your business model and the structure of your current solution you can modify the starter solution to suit your needs. They are unlocked. Then it could be a simple matter of importing to the new tables. But it sounds like you already have an FM solution the business is using. You might want to evaluate exactly what is lacking in the current solution. Then decide if your skills are up to the task.

We don't really have a pre-existing solution. We just have two unrelated tables (customers and vendors). We would like to move this data into a more sophisticated database and generate invoices. I was asking about how to move data from an existing database into a template, whether this is possible. I don't really understand the answer above, perhaps you are saying that my question does not make sense? Thanks.

 I moved your topic here from "FileMaker 13 General Discussion" to "Importing & Exporting”. because I noticed that you are using version 11 and you posted this in the general topic for 13.

 

Your question could be in a couple of different topic areas I chose this one because eventually you’re going to have to deal with the import of the data.

Hi Michael,

I didn't mean to imply your question didn't make sense. I guess the simple answer is to read up on importing records. Also, tables from several different files can co-exist in the relationship graph, and therefore in your solution. Other files need to be defined as External File References. The relevant tables need to be related to perform an import from one to the other. I hope this attempt at an answer helps more than my last.

Rick.

Rather then use the invoice starter solution, I've come across a great resource for training that includes a pretty sophisticated invoicing solution:

http://www.databasepros.com/liststore.php

http://www.databasepros.com/training.php#videos