Setting Up Server For Small Business

[D_totheJ_totheP]

Hello everyone,

Currently I am researching information for this project and wanted to see if anyone here could help me.
My father has several different applications that handle various aspects of his business. Most notable are the quoting program and the an Inventory Tracking System written with Microsoft Foxpro.
His assistant handles a majority of the quoting; however, both handle tracking inventory, which includes scanning barcodes, printing labels w/ barcodes, inputing data, etc...
His secretary handles a lot of the shipping via fed ex and invoicing.
My mother handles a lot of the account and financial information via Peachtree.

Everyone has their own separate computers and what needs to happen is when one of them saves information with one program, the same changes need to take place on the others computer. A server would be the best bet I think, but I am completely new to this whole thing.

Also, several things don't need to be "shared" between certain computers. For example, the financial information would only be saved on my mom's computer and then trasnferred to my dad's computer. Inventory Tracking would only be shared between my dad's and his assistant's. But everything would be saved to my dad's computer.

I'm sorry if this is confusing. I know a fair amount about computers, just not about networking. I have built several computers in the last year. I have some networking experience. Although I am a little confused as to how I should go about doing this.

Any help would be grealy appreciated.

Also: XP is running on all machines. And they all have T1 connections.

 

[Trizoy]

I assume you all have internet on all the machines. If you use a common router or switch you already have the funcionality you need. If not, go buy a router and plug em all into it. I would then get a dedicated hard drive for all the common files (or it can be a folder on any computer which is always on) You then share this folder to all the computers. You provide a shortcut from that one file to everyone desktop.. therefor, you open to change something, and then close it and save. The file can only be open by one person at a time though. (which is a good thing)