Hi Marshall,
That's several questions, which may take some time to answer fully depending on on skill level.  You can issue several different questions in a procedure that is activated with a button.
I hope you are using Forms to access data in your tables. That is the correct way to change data. When you process the sale that would be a good time to have your vba code change the date of sale to the current date and save the record Can you tell us which of Richard's videos you have watched/studied?  John

John, thank you for your response. I'm far from expert on Access; I've studied Richard's Beginner and about half the Advanced courses, and I've been able to start to use Access for my business as a result. Right now the "process sale" button performs only one task. I'd like to learn how to tell Access how to perform the other tasks that are part of that process. I'm hoping to add other commands, and was hoping there exists what I called "syntax" to perform different functions each time it's clicked.

Intro to VBA might be what you are looking for.

Matt, thank you; I‘ll check it out.
Marshall