diarising work

stevem71 · Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2012 5:09 am Post subject: diarising work

Hi there everybody, I hope some can help or at least tell me it can't be done!

I'm a window cleaner and I have got all my work on a spreadsheet but I'm looking to make it a bit more interactive and have been trying to work out a way to organise my work so I can put the dates that the work has been completed and hopefully with a few calculations for the spreadsheet to tell me when it's due again.

If anyone can send me in the direction for this it would be much appreciated

Thanks, Steve

jrkrideau · Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2012 5:15 am Post subject:

Quick and dirty answer: Paste work schedule in the search function which is cleverly hidden in the list of things at the top of the page. Select "search for all terms" and see what you get.

There are a number of discussions that should give you a bit of a start and let you come back with more concrete questions.
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stevem71 · Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2012 6:06 am Post subject:

Thanks for that, I have been looking in search but still cant find what I need.

I'll keep looking unless anybody else can gave me a clue?

Cheers, Steve

jrkrideau · Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2012 9:05 am Post subject:

stevem71 · Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2012 11:09 am Post subject:

Thanks very much for the advice.

Basically I have the addresses of all my customers which i break down into different areas, I normally clean these every 5-6 weeks. It's fairly straightforward to keep track of when these are due. However I am getting new customers who like them cleaned at different intervals and in different areas and it is kind of difficult to remember when these are due without going backwards and forwards in my records.

I guess what I'd like to be able to do is set my spreadsheet ( or database?) up with a field for when the work was done and for it to automatically tell me when 5 or whatever weeks was up and the work was due again. I've kind of got the idea how I could work my finances out using a database, It's just this setting up of a work schedule I can't get my head round

Like I say I'm not sure if it is possible or whether it should be a database I'm looking for?

Thanks very much for your advice from a relative newbie!

Steve

Villeroy · Posted: Tue Jun 12, 2012 1:57 am Post subject:

Of course, this is a 100% job for a relational database but most people feel an irresistible urge to try such things in spreadsheets.
So we need 4 normalized lists for clients, tasks, done jobs and may be a list of area definitions. Each task belongs to one client and each client belongs to a certain area while each done job belongs to one task.
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ozzie · Posted: Tue Jun 12, 2012 4:20 pm Post subject:

Hi Steve
I look at your question and I see a newbie asking about dates!?
If you go to a blank Calc sheet and type in the number 41090 and then change the formating of that cell to dates you will find that it changes to 30/06/12.
All dates are simply numbers (day '1' being 31/12/1899).
Calc remembers this number and as a secondary memory it remembers how you want this number to appear (ie. 30/06/12 or Saturday or a dozen different ways) but its the number that is it's main memory.
Because of this, if you have a column for 'next job dates', and place a formula such as this in it:

stevem71 · Posted: Tue Jun 12, 2012 11:06 pm Post subject:

Ozzie, thanks very much!!

That's exactly what I was looking for.

Many thanks for giving a newbie some great advice.

I can get on with it now I understand how it works.

jrkrideau · Posted: Thu Jun 14, 2012 5:54 am Post subject:

stevem71 · Posted: Thu Jun 14, 2012 11:33 am Post subject:

Thanks for the advice, Like you say having thought about it a bit more I'm sure a database would be much better. Unfortunately I haven't got any experience of creating a database, but I'm keen to learn!

Thanks again.