Suitable database software for small business [closed]

Question

First of all, I apologise if this is in the wrong area.

I'm looking for a suitable database program for a small engineering business, which needs to log various jobs. Currently, we're just using an Excel spreadsheet shared over the cloud, however this has problems with conflicts when two people edit the file at the same time.

What we want is something that can operate over the internet (so that multiple computers can access it from different locations), allowing multiple editors simultaneously. It also needs to be capable of conditional formatting. Essentially, it needs to be a kind of hybrid between a desktop database and a server database. Something that can be saved to the cloud would be the most preferable for sharing reasons.

A screenshot example of what we currently have is here

From my research I have a vague inkling that SQL would be a good base, but I'm really looking for a program that requires absolutely no background knowledge of how the language works. i.e something that isn't going to take a significant amount of time to learn to use. If there's info that I've not included, please let me know.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

For something simple like what you have, I would highly recommend Google Docs or one of variants. It's basically a spreadsheet where everyone that you give permissions to can edit at the same time. Everyone can see what everyone else is doing, so there aren't many conflicts.

A SQL database would certainly support simultaneous accesses, but I think it's overkill for what you're looking for. You would need to build an application on top of the database just to use it. If none of you are willing to spend the time to write and maintain this application, I would not do it.