A very long story short if I may please. I will attempt to answer further questions the best I can.

Attempting to get an idea of how to proceed.

Starting point - I have a CSV file. My objective is to use a report writer such as Crystal Reports for example to extract data from this file and create a report. Will I be able to convert my CSV file and or save it as another format so that I can use a report writer? If so what format would I save it in?

Presently I only have on hand Apache "Open Office-Spreadsheet" to work with.

We are a young company. We don't have any database servers etc. We are presently looking at accounting and warehouse management software which is "cloud" based from several companies. Overall so far I have found that we can "export" information to a CSV file.

I am more used to working with databases in the past (many years ago) and using Crystal Report Writer to manipulate the data and create a report. I would be able to link fields of records from one data table to another. Also, using some simple SQL statements I could take data from several data tables and create a new virtual data table where I could use this information to create my report and once the report ran the data table would no longer exist so it did not take up a lot of hard disk space.

I know I have several file formats I can select from when saving the "CSV" file in Open Office but don't know the best way to proceed. Not ruling out using MS Excel but we do not own the full version and don't want to invest in it unless it will provide us with the ability to do with what we need. If we use MS Excel I would assume that we would only be able to use the report writer within Excel itself to create the reports. If I am incorrect in this please let me know.

Overall my/our main objective is to be able to use the CSV file data that has been exported and then later have the ability to use a report writer to create the report.

So basically I am looking for a starting point here. Do we need to purchase something such as MS SQL (or similar) to accomplish this.

Please forgive me if some of my terminology is incorrect or not on target. I am trying to help a friend of mine. He has a growing business and he has asked me to look at some accounting and warehouse management systems with him. Many years ago I was more into the database end (such as a distribution center). I would create Crystal Reports for the heads of the departments such as Purchasing, Inventory Control, Warehouse Production etc. I had the database tables to work with along with the definitions of the data-tables and records/fields. At the time (2003-2006) they were using MicroSoft Great Plains and Radio Beacon WMS. These of course are high end packages of which my friend can not invest in at this time. We are a bit limited as the package must be able to inter-connect with many websites such as Amazon, eBay etc that he sells his products on.

It has been years for me but I do know that no matter what "canned" reports a software package provides it will never be exactly what you want. This is why I want to be able to extract data and create the reports that will be far more useful for him and also he won't have to use 3 of the canned reports, create an excel spreadsheet entering the information and then have the results he needs in one report.

Any suggestions would be so most gratefully appreciated.

Thank you