Hi there!  We recently purchased Sesame 2.5 and are going to move from Q&A to Sesame.  I want to do this once and do it right, so I've been asking the end users for their "wish lists" of things they would like to see.  Currently we have 5 - 7 customer databases for different facilities.  While each has it's own set of fields for charges and different programming there is some duplication of customers.

My thought was that I could possibly have one master database so we only have to input customer information once and then be able to list out their charges as they arise.  Would the best starting point be to import the Q & A databases to Sesame as is and then play around with merging them into one database?

If anyone can share their thoughts and ideas, I'd appreciate it.

~Robin

Possibly.  Here is the situation more specifically:

Q&A DB1: Marina tenants unique by stall number.  Includes customer information and payment information for seasonal rental(252 records have to come over)
DB2: Boatslip Tenants unique by stall number.  Includes customer information and payment information for seasonal rental (20 records have to come over)
DB3: Storage Facility A customers.  Includes customer information and payment information for two separate seasons. (100 records have to come over)
DB4: Storage Facility B customers.  Includes customer information and payment information for two separate seasons. (100 records have to come over)

We need to be able to know, and print reports for all of the separate facilities.  I'm almost wondering if it wouldn't be easier just to import the customer information and re-enter the facility info manually.

One thing you may want to look into is doing more than 4 imports. Figure out which database has the most fields and translate that.  Then add to that database any fields that only exist in the other databases. You know the first one will work because you translated that. Delete those records but keep the database.  Translate the remaining three, import each one separately and check it, make any changes necessary to the database structure, then delete those records. If there are any problems with the translated source data, you can fix the source then try the import again.

Once you know that each translated QA database will import correctly, delete all records from the target and import each of the four.

It would help to add a temporary "junk" field that will identify the source of the records, so you can do mass updates for If Junk = 1 then ....