MS Access can be used for serial communication. It isn't the easiest task but it can be done. Serial communication can be done with the mscomm32.ocx control. In addition I recall some code floating around out there for doing serial communication directly from VBA using the Windows API. The primary issue using a ocx control is the control must be registered on any computer you want to use. MS Access is an incredibly versatile tool, but it does have its limitations.
You can also use visual basic to perform serial communication. However you will need to record the data to either a database such as MS Access or SQL Sever. The easiest thing for you to do would be to handle the serial comunnication in visual basic and store the data in an .mdb file.