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Hello, setting up airtable for the first time.  We are a nonprofit looking to track our funds that support our grants.

Currently we are using multiple worksheets in excel.

I am trying to figure out where to start. I have imported the Fund names and Contact information
(Funds).  The next tabs we have are for our investment returns and fees which contains our fund name, contributions, admin fees, investment returns, disbursement amounts and ending balance. 

We have a worksheet for each year.

The common link is the fund name in Funds.  Should I create a table for each year and link it to the funds table by the fund name?  

What would be the best way to view the Funds table and see the budget information for each year.

Hoping this makes sense, any helps is appreciated.  

 

If I were you I’d have a single big ‘Transactions’ table with all the transactions regardless of year, that way you could easily do charting and reporting from that one table

I’m assuming you’re already familiar with creating a new table with a CSV, right? 

If so, I’d import one of the sheets as a new table and have all the fields set automatically set up.  After that I’d use the CSV Import extension to import the remaining sheets into the same table: https://support.airtable.com/docs/csv-import-extension

With this you can create an Interface from this table’s data and make some pretty nifty graphs, bucketing by year, month, etc

I do free half hour calls, should be more than enough time to get some of your stuff imported and for us to create a rudimentary dashboard I reckon.  Here's a link to schedule a call if that sounds good to you!

Hey ​@nhudson,

As mentioned by Adam above, the best practice would be to have just one table for transactions (regardless of the year). This is probably different to what you would find on your own google sheet/excel files. However the idea is that you will have one unique source of truth for the Transactions. If you need to see only a transactions for specific years that is were you would apply filters and/or views (more on Airtable views here).

I’d be happy to show you around Airtable best practices, and go through your specific needs. Feel free to grab a slot using this link!

Mike, Consultant @ Automatic Nation 
YouTube Channel

Adam and Mike have some great tips here, but just generally speaking it’s important to know that while Airtable looks like a spreadsheet, it’s actually a database. It’s more like a flexible and friendly (and actually functional) MS Access than a superpowered Excel. 

I’ve been utilizing Airtable for non-profits in a bunch of different ways, having come to it without any data background, and it was really useful to get a basic grounding in database structure (this YouTube vid was helpful for me at least) to better grasp when I should use a new table or not. 

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