Documents or forms and inventory databases

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Hi!
First I will start off with the fact I am a graphic designer rather than a developer so my knowledge of coding is limited at best. Now, to my problem...

A client has asked me to develop a couple of systems for their company, one for use by workers off site and the other for the use of their office. I am really not sure how and if these are possible using the base install of C5 or with any of the available add-ons. I am really liking for some guidance as to if this is at all possible and how to go about it.

First, they need engineers to be able to access certain documents whilst working in the field, fill them out and then return them to the manager for filing. I am thinking either uploaded Word or PDF files that can be accessed, opened, filled out and then saved back into the CMS. The documents would need to save back to a different folder/set than the original. The biggest issue I think is that they need to fill out these documents on mobile devices, so everything from a laptop to an iPad or smart phone. I was thinking it would be easier to open in the browser for completion (which i know the documents add-on can potentially do) but would the completed document then be able to save to a different location?

I was considering the easier route would be to make these as forms instead, but would then need to save that form in the style/format (or close to) of their standard document... or even export the form as a styled PDF and save to a folder/set? I am not sure if this is even possible without a lot of coding which is beyond my abilities.

Secondly, they need a company asset inventory (table or list) which the office manager can access and make changes to, preferably from a front page without logging into the backend. The biggest issue I have here is that some assets will need to have an expiry date (employee certificates), and when the asset is within a certain time, say one month before the expiry date, an alert is sent to the office manager, either by displaying an alert box on the asset register page which stays until the asset is updated or deleted, or by sending the manager an email. I was thinking Express might be the way forward but really not sure about setting up the expiry alert.

Both of these systems should be accessible through front end protected pages accessible via a login page which will then allow them to see whatever pages their permission allow.

Ok, I hope all that makes sense? Any ideas, suggestions or theories will be most welcome. I really want to build this in C5 rather than look elsewhere, but with nothing that I can find in the Templates or Add-Ons that even comes close to this sort of ‘business management’ set up I am worried that my options are limited.

Thanks for any and all help that this great community might be able to give with this!

Steve.