Excel Invoice Manager - a Flexible Invoice
Program/Application
Microsoft Excel provides comprehensive data
formatting, calculation, reporting and analysis
facilities. This is why so many people use it
as an invoice creator. There are also a number
of free and commercial invoice workbooks you
can download from the Internet. However, like
it or not, this fact must be faced: Excel is
basically a client oriented, general-purpose
desktop tool and is not specialized to store,
organize, and manage large amounts of data.
To successfully store, organize, and manage
large amounts of data, such as your daily
invoices, the best choice is a Relational
Database Management System (RDBMS).
Excel Invoice Manager is
based on these two time-tested technologies and
allows them to do what they are best at: using
an Excel template/workbook to create, calculate
invoices and reports, using a back-end database
to store and manage all persistent data like
customers, products, and invoices.
The advantages of this approach are obvious.
With the front-end Excel workbook/template, you
get not only a What You See Is What You Get
tool to create invoices and reports, but also
the thousands of features that come with Excel
to customize everything you need. With the
back-end database system, you have a safe,
efficient mechanism to store and manage large
amounts of data.
From the point of implementation, an
Excel Invoice Manager system
consists of three parts:
- The first part is Excel
templates/workbooks with responsibility for
creating and calculating invoices and
displaying reports. The workbook itself does
all calculations related to invoice. In other
words, this invoice workbook can run alone to
create and print invoices, without the help
from other two parts.
- The second part is an Excel COM add-in,
which runs in background and connects the
Excel workbooks to the back-end databases.
This COM add-in creates a bridge between the
invoice workbook and the database, providing
an interface for all database tasks, such as
querying databases and returning
results.
- The third part is a relational database
that provides a secure, efficient, flexible
mechanism mechanism to store and manage all
persistent data.
The Excel COM add-in is a very flexible
invoice program that has the ability to connect
multiple invoice workbooks to different
databases. As a result, you can design your
invoice management system as follows:
- One workbook, one database: This is the
simplest model. You create invoices using the
invoice workbook and store them to the
database through the COM add-in.
- Multiple workbooks, one database: By
applying multiple workbooks, with each
workbook having its own styles, colors,
contents, or even a different tax system, you
can use very different workbooks to create
invoices and then store them to the same
central database. These workbooks can be
installed on different workstations on a LAN,
or they can also be installed on a single
workstation.
- One workbook, multiple databases: As
mentioned above, all persistent data is
stored in databases. You can use multiple
databases to isolate different types of data.
For example: one database for one business
type.
- Multiple workbooks, multiple databases.
On a single workstation with one copy of
Excel Invoice Manager installed, you can
utilize multiple databases and workbooks to
construct a complex invoice management
system.
Minimum System Requirements:
- Windows 2000/XP
- Microsoft Excel/Office 2000/XP/2003
|