Which Tool Is Best for Building a Hair Salon Employee Management Program?

[Bailey]

I have very limited programming experience, only done VB in the past and excel and access to some extent. I'm trying to creat a simple program for this problem:

An owner a hairdressing salon want to keep track of its employee's daily workload. Basically she want each employee to input basic data such as the "time interval" for each customer they service, the "price" they charge for the service. Then at the end of the day, she can save & print out a manifest that show those basic data. And furthermore, at the end of the month she can print out a final manifest that show everything such as total customer each employee service in that given month, and the accumulated revenue for each employee.

I'm kinda mixed as to which way would be the easier route to setup a program that enable her to do this. It has to be either vb or excel (& access). Any advice would be appreciated, Thank.

 

[mathmate]

It would be relatively simple to create an excel worksheet to keep track of that kind of information. It would be something else to get the system to work, if we consider aspects of :
1. Big brother effect: the employees will feel like having a video camera over their heads, every move they do would be monitored.
2. Money effect: do they have to report tips? Are they employees paid by the hour or free-lance paying a commission?
3. Union effect: Is that a big place with 35 employees where the supervisor cannot keep track of who's doing what? Can the supervisor or the cashier do the data entry instead of the employee? Can this system be combined with an appointment system to <camouflage> the monitoring effect? Is a supervisor/owner present all the time?

 

[Tanner65]

I agree with mathmate, the easiest answer would be an Excel spreadsheet.

But, I think a long term solution would be an Access database MDE or a VB .Net application using an Access/MSQL database.

The reason I say move to the database is that once you get the information into the tables you can begin reporting off of it without having a third party tool. Granted, it is possible to report information from an Excel spreadsheet, but IMHO it's much more efficient and clean to have it in a database table.

 

[mathmate]

but IMHO it's much more efficient and clean to have it in a database table.

I agree with that too. I am just thinking of the development time and maintenance headaches unless it is done by someone familiar with the subject.

I personally do not like Excel or Access solutions for exactly the same reasons as you mentioned, ... dragging an MS software for every user. There are security issues too, like data being modified, etc.