Try taking an Access class, if you are near New Horizons Computer Learning Center, or similar. SBA may also have offerings, or people there may know of outlets for teachers or lower cost consultants. Think also of junior colleges, someone may want a class project and solve your problem.
The design is crucial, and should be oriented to the data you most need and use in your practice area. Access works really well when populated into fields that make sense for the appraisal scope, and the software is already bundled in Office. A couple of tips are to design a field set that works, then copy the whole database for what matters to you, as Terrel mentioned, the year is crucial for him; I use location, so have about 10 similar databases which are filled. The beauty is you can search in the Table view to rapidly pick out comparables based on the search of the day, be that date, building size, $per Sq Ft, etc. Then, use the Form view for individual comparable presentation.
As Marion mentioned, automatic form filling is a very worthy goal. I recently outscourced a task to do this, but during the solution process, found the variety of MLS databases to lead to many problems like field mis-matches, and too much time expended for the usage rate of this tool in the appraisal process. So, not an easy solution, and the problem of using just the downloaded MLS data is that a decent comparable will also need research support for deed and tax records regarding current owner, transfer deed Liber/Page, discussion with participants, etc, which are not typically included in MLS sales records. So, batch entry works for now, and there are still hopes for a partially automated future.
Costowl shows costs of about $50-$250 per hour for database consultant, or $2,000-$10,000 for small business database solution. This may be the quickest way for a solution custom to your needs, but is dependent on communication between your desires and the ability of the consultant to deliver a database template with reasonable performance at a low and capped cost.
