Creating an enrollment system

Question

I don't even know if this is possible in numbers (but don't have the $500 for filemaker), but what I'm trying to do is create an automated enrollment system for some classes I teach.
I need 3 sheets:
1) List of all classes
2) Registration Form (accesses sheet 1 for pricing)
3) Class Attendance (accesses sheet 1 for class date/time and sheet 2 for name/phone/email)
The problem is that I have one registration form and need to be able to have the student information go to the right class sheet and then into a new row, not overwriting current student information.
One way I was thinking to do this would be to have the registration forms as completely separate documents and then having class attendance reference each of those.
Is there a way to get numbers to reference a separate document?
I get the feeling I just need to suck it up and get filemaker, but I thought I'd throw this one out there. Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Hi Sarah,
Welcome to the Numbers discussion. There is one distinct question in your post: "Is there a way to get numbers to reference a separate document?", and the answer to that one is no. That's just a minor problem unless you have a huge amount of data, in which case, yes, you should be looking at Filemaker.
In Numbers, the Sheet is the pivotal unit. There can be numerous Sheets per Document and there can be numerous Tables per Sheet. Also, each sheet can be divided into separately printable pages.
You could assign your three functions to separate sheets in one document.
As I see your considerations, Filemaker costs more to purchase and may cost more to implement, in training costs. Filemaker will outlast Numbers as the size of your project grows and it will also outperform Numbers in terms of features that you may wish to implement as you gain experience with the data. There's not much to lose in giving Numbers a try though.
Jerry