Microsoft access database design how to#

The column trans_type would hold transaction codes, such as 'DEB' (debit), 'CRE' (credit), 'TRA' (transfer) and 'BAL' (balance), etc. The daily transaction id 0000 could be the account balance at the beginning (or end) of the day, and the id 0001 and up are other transactions.

This would be useful to track the transactions and return a range, etc. 201102230000) where the last 4 digits would be the daily transaction id. The column key would consist of a date and a zero-padded numeric value (i.e. If I were to design a minimalistic accounting application, I would probably do something like ledger I was more looking the advantages/disadvantages of either method as well as what would be the 'best practice'.

Microsoft access database design how to#

Part of me is saying that as the entries table grows the ability to generate the balance for each account will get slower (yes premature optimization is supposedly evil), but it also seems unnecessary to add another table when I can calculate the data from existing tables.Д®DIT: Sorry I may not have been clear, I understand how to implement either method of creating the account balance.

The dilemma that I have is, I don't know if I should create another table to store the current balance of each account or if I should populate it dynamically by subtracting the debits from the credits.

Basically at the moment, I have an entries table which obviously stores data about each transaction, whether is credit or debt etc. However I'm unsure with part of the database design. After searching around for a minimalistic money tracking/budgeting app, I decided to build one for my own personal use.