My mom has a small business and I was wanting to make use out of her computer to help her to log sales and inventory.

The program needs a database type interface to enter an item number in one catagory, a brief description of the item in another and a picture of the item. The program needs a search function to find by either the item number or description. Also easily change to spreadsheet to be able to print out an inventory log and total up the purchase price and sale price.

Anyone have any ideas of what to look for? I have office 97 on an old computer I bought but I don't see anywhere to insert pictures in the database and I don't know how to swap between the database and spreadsheet.

Any free or cheap programs would be nice but if not any suggestions would be nice.

Try Microsoft Access using one of the built-in templates which can be altered to suit your own purposes. Also, get some kind of instruction book or visit some websites.
http://users.bigpond.net.au/abrowne1/tips.html
is a good site to try.