Manufacturing Cost calculator; is what I am trying to do feasible?

So here would be the setup.  The goal is to make an estimate.  So let's call it that and not a Query.

Here are the tables and their relationships.

One Estimate has Many Material Estimate Lines.
One Material Master has Many Material Master Lines.

So you will need to make a new table for Estimates and also a new table for what is called the join table which are the Material Estimate line items on the Estimate.

Lookup the unit cost of the Material down to Material Estimate Lines and call it [Unit Material Cost (lookup)] (well the field name is actually Unit Material Cost (lookup) without the square brackets

Then make a new field called [Unit Material Cost]

https://help.quickbase.com/user-assistance/setting_up_snapshot_fields.html

Edit the field properties to make it a snapshot of [Unit Material Cost (lookup)]

The reason is that a year from now when your costs change, you do not want to change the original costing for last years' jobs.  So you freeze the lookup with a snapshot field.


Then we do the same thing with the Labour component, assuming that you want to maintain your Labour costs in a separate Labour Master table.

So then to do your Estimates, you first create an estimate with basic header information like who the customer is that you are Quoting and the Date.

Then you will add Material Estimate line itms and have fields to calculate the extended cost of the line item with price times qty.

Then on the relationship, make a summary field to summary total the extended Materials Line Items extended price.

Then do the same with the Labour costs.

Post back if you get stuck anywhere.