Hazel Row Flowers

Stems and their waste, bouquets and recipes, orders and deliveries, weddings and the till for a florist.

Download 341 KB19 tables, 12 queries, 9 reports, 6 print templates and 14,006 invented records, dated back from 2026-10-22.

Rutba Data Files with Hazel Row Flowers, the florist sample, open at its print template Order confirmation: a page laid out with the business's own name and address at the head and one of its records filled in, beside the list of the database's tables and how many records each holds — Hazel Row Flowers in Rutba Data Files, made with its invented records and open at its print template Order confirmation.

Overview

Hazel Row Flowers is an invented florist's shop in Stoke Newington, north London, run by its owner with two florists, a Saturday junior and a delivery driver. It sells hand-tied bouquets, arrangements, plants and wrapped bunches over the counter, takes orders by phone and online for delivery across north and east London or for collection, makes funeral tributes, and does the flowers for a dozen or more weddings a year.

The sample holds twelve months of the shop, made up a day at a time, and the orders already booked for the coming week. Three mornings a week the owner buys at an invented wholesale market and from a grower, buying for the days until the next market from what is booked and what the till usually sells. Each stem lasts a set number of days; what passes its best before it is used is thrown away and logged. Each product has a recipe of the stems it takes, so the orders booked turn into the stems to buy, and the price and the recipe give its margin.

Valentine's Day, Mother's Day and the weeks before Christmas are the busy days, with red roses at more than twice their usual market price in early February. Weddings are quoted months ahead, mostly for summer Saturdays; a quarter is paid to book and the rest four weeks before. Prices include VAT, as a shop's do, so receipts and invoices show the VAT within them.

In Rutba Data Files, choose Florist on the start screen, then With sample records to look around, or Empty for the same design with nothing in it.

It suits, with small changes

A florist with a shop or a studio
A flower stall or market trader
A wedding and events florist
A plant shop or garden centre counter
A gift and hamper shop that makes up orders
A cake maker who takes orders for set days

Read on

Tutorial: the everyday tasks: 7 everyday tasks, step by step, each naming what to open.
Tables, fields and relationships: every field of 19 tables, and how they are related.
Queries, forms, reports and print templates: what each one shows, its criteria and calculated columns, and when to print it.

Things you should know

Everything in a sample's records is invented: the business, the people, their addresses, e-mail addresses on example domains that reach nobody, and phone numbers from the ranges kept for drama and fiction. Tax, company and bank numbers are placeholders of zeros.
The dates count back from the day the file was made, and some run on into the weeks after it, as real bookings and due dates do. Made from the Data Files start screen, a sample is dated from that day. Queries that compare with today (overdue, due this week) show more as a downloaded file gets older.
To start empty, choose the same business on the start screen and then Empty: the same tables, queries, forms, reports and print templates, with nothing in them but the Start Here guide.
Your records live in one file on your computer. Keep copies: File, Save As makes one, and a copy on another drive or in your own cloud storage keeps it safe if this computer is lost. Close the database before copying the file by hand.
Every change to the design (a new field, a renamed table) is a numbered step that Data Files keeps, so you can see what was changed and when.
In Stock on an item is kept by hand: add the stems when you buy, take them off as they are used or thrown away. The sample's figures were made that way, so they never go below nought.
A product's recipe is what the margin and the stems to buy are worked out from. Keep it close to what the florists really use; when a bouquet changes, change its recipe lines.
The margin query counts each product's price once, on its recipe's line 1, and takes the cost of every line from it. Every recipe needs a line 1.
Prices include VAT. The VAT within a price is the price less the price divided by 1.2; each line's is worked out to the penny and added up, as the receipt and invoice print it.
Every order prints from the print templates, whatever its Status: the Gift card message for a standing order with no card prints an empty card, and a cancelled order still has its confirmation. Choose the orders to print, or print the one on screen.
Weddings are separate from orders, with their own lines, because they are quoted and paid differently. A quote not yet booked prints a Wedding invoice with no number; print the invoice only once the wedding is booked.
Walk-in sales are in Till Sales and are not given an occasion, so the query Takings by occasion counts orders only.

Starting with your own records

Start with Business, your own name, address, VAT number and bank details, which every document prints. Then Staff, Suppliers, Items (every stem, foliage and sundry you buy, with its life) and Products, then each product's Recipe Lines, and Delivery Areas. Count what is in the workroom into In Stock. Customers, orders, runs, till sales, purchases, waste and weddings come in as you trade.

Making it yours

Every change to the design is a numbered step in Data Files, so a change can be seen and undone.

Sell online: add a Source field to Orders (Phone, Website, Shop) and a query of orders by source.
Remember the dates customers send flowers for: add a Reminders table (customer, occasion, date, recipient) and a query of reminders in the next fourteen days, to call or e-mail them.
Price by size: add Small, Medium and Large as separate products, each with its own recipe, as the sample does with hand-tied bouquets.
Take accounts for businesses and funeral directors: add Payment Days to Customers and an Invoices table, so standing orders are invoiced monthly.
Record substitutions: add a Substitutions table (order, item asked for, item used) for the days the market runs short.
Hire out vases and stands for weddings: add a Hire Items table and a Wedding Hire table with the return date, and a query of what is still out.
Count the van's miles: add Miles and Fuel to Delivery Runs and a monthly query of the cost of delivering.

Questions people ask

How do I know what to buy at the market?: Run the query Stems to buy for the next 3 days (or print the report Market list). It adds up the recipes of every order booked for the next three days, beside what is in stock. Add what the till sells on a usual day, and more before a busy day.
Why do my margins change from week to week?: The margin uses each item's Cost per Stem, the price at the last buy. When roses go up at the market before Valentine's Day, the margin on a dozen roses comes down until the price falls again.
How do I print tomorrow's cards?: Open the print template Gift card message from Print templates and choose tomorrow's orders (the query Deliveries today and tomorrow lists them). Each card has only the message and who it is from.
How do I change the delivery charges?: Edit the Charge in the Delivery Areas form. New orders take the new charge; orders already taken keep theirs.
A customer has cancelled. What do I do?: Set the order's Status to Cancelled and clear Paid On when the money has gone back. Cancelled orders are left out of the takings and the deliveries.
How do I see what is being thrown away?: Print the report Weekly waste for twelve weeks of waste, and run Waste by item for the last four weeks by item, the costliest first.
Where is a wedding's balance?: The Total less the Deposit. The query Weddings in the next 60 days shows it for each booked wedding not yet paid, with the days until it is due.

Data Files is free

It comes with Rutba Office, with no account and no trial.

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