Data entry SUCKS!

Data entry SUCKS! I helped my wife update data for 450 households in our neighborhood association. Thankfully most people don’t change their details each year!

A few points of interest:

1) a remarkable number of people changed email from “” to “” this year.

2) there seems to be a dichotomy of members: those who join the association within 1-2 years of moving in, and people who never join. However, there were a few exceptions, like someone who joined after moving in 12 years ago. It makes me wonder what that person’s reason was.

3) there’s huge variation from block to block. A small number of blocks have nearly 100% participation (including mine) while many have <20%.

3 replies on “Data entry SUCKS!”

  1. Mo: Not really. The only thing I can say is that FileMaker is an awesome database for lightweight jobs like this. Other than making the people enter their own data, FMP is about the most efficient workflow I can envision without AI. 🙂

    I’d consider an online webform, but then there’s issues with privacy, collecting dues, and anti-tech folks.

  2. Your comment about filemaker pro made me feel less embarrassed about choosing it (often) for light data manipulation tasks. As a non-programer, it’s amazing how much and how quickly I can do with ScriptMaker, custom functions, and calculation fields. Too bad they never made an elegant way to expose layouts to the web. Great tool though!

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