NOTE: This class just covers the basics and calculates monthly payments. If you're looking to generate a complete amortization schedule (with principal, interest, start & end period balances, and the works) be sure to see my MICROSOFT ACCESS LOAN AMORTIZATION SEMINAR.

We'll begin by building a loan calculator where you can enter in the price of the loan, the down payment, interest rate, and number of years. Access will then be able to tell you what your monthly payments will be. We'll first see how this works in Excel.

Then we'll build an Access form to calculate the same basic results.

We'll make a "Create Payments" button which will use a Recordset to fill a subform with all of the payments we'll have to make over the life of this loan, including payment amount and due date.

We'll use a form footer total to be able to see the current and total balance of the loan.

We'll add the ability to track your payments on the loan.

Next we'll move to a very popular topic that lots of students ask me about: how to add an item to a combo box. To do that, we have to learn how to program for the Not In List event. We'll start with a simple list of customers with states.

We also need a simple State table.

We'll make a Customer form with a combo box to pick the state.

If the user types in a state that we didn't have in the State table, we'll give him the option to ADD it to the table and save it in the customer record.

It looks easy here, but there's actually a LOT of programming behind that one little Yes/No option. You'll see how to do it in class.

Access 324 - Course Outline

1. Loan Calculator, Part 1
Calculating Loan Amortizations
Enter In Data For Loan
Price Of House
Down Payment
Interest Rate
Term of Loan
Calculate Amount Financed
Calculate Monthly Payment
Using the PMT Function
PMT in Excel
Calculate Total Payments
Calculate Interest Paid

2. Loan Calculator, Part 2
Build the Loan Form
Build the Payment Form
Use a RecordSet to Create Payments
DateAdd Function
Me.Requery to See Subform Updates

3. Loan Calculator, Part 3
Payment Total SUM
Label to Filter Payments
Show Current Payments
Show All Payments
Me.Filter
Me.FilterOn
Turning the Filter On and Off
Check For Existing Payments
DLookup Any Existing Payments
Delete Query to Erase Schedule

4. Loan Calculator, Part 4
RecordSet to Add Manual Payments
Change RecordSource Better Than Filter

5. Loan Calculator, Part 5
Fixing the Missing Penny Fraction

6. On Not In List Event, Part 1
Customer Table
State Table - Storing Text
Add Different State - Not In Table
AdSource Table - Storing a Number
Limit To List Property

7. On Not In List Event, Part 2
NotInList Event
NewData Parameter
Response Parameter
acDataErrDisplay
acDataErrContinue
acDataErrAdded
Ask User If They Want To Add Data
Recordset to Add Value To Table
Using InputBox for Additional Fields