Cashiering system Essay

Introduction In our generation so many things are different. The advent of technology has changed the way we live, work and spend leisure time. Computer was considered the lifeblood of society; people are everywhere. And the advancement in discoveries, both in hardware and software, keep coming, day in and day out. Technology changes and improves at a rapid pace and companies and institutions need to cope with it. This is because as the latest knowledge of development in computer technology grows people’s standard increase. people seek and crave for betterment and more efficient ways to accomplish tedious task. At the present time, people behind large and small companies adopt modern technology in order to survive and compete with markets demands. Also, through the use of this, different transactions and processing systems have become computerized for greater ease and accuracy. An automated cashiering system is any system where an input is provided and a machine or computer carries out a process that produces an output. A cashiering and student account system is a combination of software and hardware that receives call detail and service usage information, groups this information for specific accounts or customers, produces invoices, creates reports for management, and records (posts) payments made to customer accounts. 1.1 Background of Study Most institutions and establishments that researcher visit are using systems to easily cater the needs of the customers or clients. It will also provide a better service to its clientele. The system will properly accommodate the needs of the students and the parents in taking the statement of accounts. It will provide an accurate, fast and smart statement of accounts to students that are up-dated for the school administrator and the students. It will also provide students to view their own statement of accounts.  Cashiering and Student Account System has different features that would be a perfect aide for the students, school administrators, cashiers and parents as well. It can process payments and assessments of students. It can also view the remaining balance of students and can view the previous and present income collected in every department or courses. Administrators can modify the information of students and cashiers. Administrators can also monitor the user’s log, if who and what time the user (cashiers or students) used the system. Administrators can also view the history of payments and the remaining balance of students. 1.2 Statement of Objectives 1.2.1 General Objective The main objectives of this study is to design and develop an Automated Cashiering system and student account system in Madana Mohana Academy that will to make their recording fast, easy, updatable and accurate. Likewise accounting data becomes efficient with minimal accounting errors, to increase cashiering productivity. 1.2.2 Specific Objective A user-friendly computer system that can perform the following task: Develop a system that can give accurate records of the student financial records. Develop a system that can accept & calculate payments and let the user choose any particular. Print bills for individual account. Develop a system that generates accurate weekly, monthly, and yearly reports. Develop a system that Let the user allow to add, delete, and edit information. Develop a system that can store data in the database. Develop a system that let the admin to create an account. 1.3 Significance of the study Having an automated Cashiering system is not only significant for the institution but also for the employees and students as well. It is significant for the institution for all of their transaction are accelerated they can maximize the capability of their employees, they will have less  expenses, and having such system will boost their popularity. A system that accelerates transaction and automate developing of the cashiering & SAS will benefit the employees for they don’t have to waste their time recording, searching for records, writing reports, and all other manual staff therefore they can do their job at their best. It is significant for the students because they don’t have to waste time just to pay their bill and they don’t have to worry for their account because everything and all of their records are safe. 1.4 Scope and limitation Our project includes billing the students, accepts payments made, produces invoices, and creates reports for management. Our project is only limited to that transaction therefore any other system like enrollment and grading system is not included in this system. If you like to upgrade your system with that following, it will be another contract. Foreign Literature According to some inventors; An automated cashier apparatus, comprising a console having first and second compartments therein, said first and second compartments being separately and independently accessible; data entry means for accepting purchase information from a customer and data display means for displaying sale-related data to the customer; communication means for transmitting said purchase information to a remote order fulfillment means, said data entry and display means and communication means being mounted in said first compartment; means for accepting credit card purchase information; coin and currency acceptance, storage and dispensation means located in said second compartment, said second compartment comprising a tamper-resistant safe structure; said data entry and display means, credit card acceptance means and coin and currency acceptance and dispensation means being logically interconnected and controlled by microprocessor means comprising a primary microprocessor l ocated in said second compartment and a secondary microprocessor located in said first compartment, said primary microprocessor adapted to control coin and currency acceptance and dispensation and said secondary microprocessor adapted to perform order acceptance and display functions. Local Literature The Liberty Christian School is a Christian coeducational day school, named after Pastor Celis. It was established on November 28. The Liberty Christian manual enrollment and cashiering system was developed in 1993 and it’s unable to meet the growing demands for their students. Hence, it needs a re- engineering and introduce new modification for the system in accordance to the fast-changing technology. The new well – enhanced automated system of Liberty Christian School Enrollment and Cashiering System has begun this year during the second semester of 2007-2008. The new system of Liberty Christian School has improved to the unsatisfactory performance of the old system. The certain flow of our program is inputting the necessary information of the students and supply the correct output of the enrollment, and the selected accounts of the students. There are certain necessities that have been added in the system, like, a student could possibly be accelerated or dropped out from class due to failed subjects of which the student could have made up or summer classes within that year. Also, the students could promptly ask for an assessment of his/her subjects together with his/her accounts. There are typical problems of the system that has been established but because of this proposal the system is clarified and settled in some ways, such as records of students are easily updated and information are being retrieved accurately, Advancing Information Technology Research accounting data is efficient with minimal accounting errors. Also, it enhances cashiering productivity. 2.0 Review of related Literature and studies Cashiering and student account system has existed for a very long time, people has already been having transactions every day in their lives. But as the advancement of technology take over the way we live, people always seek to make things easier with the help of the machines or computer. That’s why programmers try to make everything automated to make our work easier. Methodology For developing this project we used the Systems development life cycle (SDLC). SDLC is a process used by systems analyst to develop an information system. The SDLC aims to produce a high quality system that meets or exceeds  customer expectation, reaches completion within times and cost estimates, works effectively and efficiently. SDLC can be described along spectrum of agile to iterative to sequential. But for this project we use the sequential, which is the waterfall. We used the waterfall as a guide follows its sequence of stages in which our output of each stage becomes our input for the next. These stages start with as planning, analysis, design, implementation, and maintenance. As we go on in this project we will follow this stages to derive in a successful system. Planning Our system analyst conduct series of research, visit the company, observe how their current system works, and interview many employee involve in the system as many as possible. In this phase, we aim to gather data, determined the problem, determine the cost, develop schedule, consider the need of the client, set goals and objective that will serve as a guide throughout this project. Analysis With the data gathered in the planning phase, we now use this data to make and information out of it. We will then provide solution with the problem we discovered. Describe costs and benefits and submit a preliminary plan with recommendation. We also try to communicate with the client and ask for their recommendations and how they would like their system to become. With the complete information our system analyst have gathered. She now discussed with the system designer and builders and explains everything on how the system will work. Design In this phase we now use the information and decision made in the analysis phase. Our designers job to make our project to have great user interface. We will show you the final design in the later page. Implementation This phase involved in installation, and testing the final system of course with the client’s approval. We also conduct training for the users of the system. Maintenance This is the last phase in the waterfall method; the system is already running in this phase. This phase is for some corrections and upgrades to expand the  systems capacities. When this phase is over our contract is done. But if the client request for additional function it will be an additional contract. 1.1 Requirement Analysis 1.1.1 Client/Customer Requirements By applying Agile modeling in developing our Information system, we developers observes how their current system work and conducted an initial interview. We then discuss on how we are going to upgrade their current system with the clarification with the limitations that the system that we will be making will only support student registration and accept some payment, then we are given some requirements from the client on how their system should be upgraded; Secure Data storage Password protected User-friendly Graphical User-Interface To be able to generate reports and transaction Handles payment Prints receipt 1.1.2 Performance Requirements 1.1.3 Functional requirements 1.1.4 Hardware Requirements 1.1.5 Software Requirements VISUAL BASIC.NET SQL DATABASE 2. Schedule of Activities 3. Logical Design 3.1 Entity-Relationship Diagram 3.2 Activity Diagram 3.3 Screenshots 3.4 Development 3.5 Testing 3.6 Deployment 3.7 Evaluation 3.8 Maintenance Plan 4. Result and Discussions 5. Conclusion And recommendation 6. Appendices 7. References http://www.gordonschools.aberdeenshire.sch.uk/Departments/Computing/StandardGrade/AutoSysWeb/1Introduction.htm http://www.gordonschools.aberdeenshire.sch.uk/Departments/Computing/StandardGrade/AutoSysWeb/2Advantages.htm http://www.ask.com/question/what-are-the-disadvantages-of-a-manual-system http://www.ask.com/question/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-manual-system http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_the_disadvantages_of_manual_systems http://www.studymode.com/essays/Related-Literature-1105941.html http://www.webgeekresources.com/ http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5183142.html 8. System Coding 3.0 4.0 Data Gathering Procedures and Output In our Data gathering since we decide to use the waterfall method we follow its phases to gather information. First, in our planning phase we search for a willing company to make their system automated, there we found the institution called Madana Mohana Academy who wants their cashiering system automated. To gather data we conduct a series of interview to the involved employee, we also ask for the management for their ideal system. After the  interview we observe how their current system works. Upon observing we notice many problems and we got an idea on what system we will develop. After the planning phase we move on to our analysis and so on. That’s how we gather data and came up with an output. 5.1 Company background Madana Mohana Academy is a private school own by Mr. George Bristol. It is a non-sectarian pro-life institution which means it is a vegetarian school bringing meat inside the campus is strictly prohibited. Its vision is to help the student to understanding their essence, position, and function as a human being, and there mission is extract the student’s full potential. MMA is a Hindu practice school. It’s been develop last 19forgoten which started as a preliminary school, but it’s been develop over the year and now they have secondary level and looking forward to be a college. MMA is a private school and has been supported by rich Hindus over the world. MMA is quite different from other school it’s like a training center. It discipline the students and guide them how to live in this world without being attach in it. Relationship with opposite sex are also prohibited. 5.2 Description of the System Cashiering and student account system is the heart of their system it is because it is where payments are made, confidential records are stored. Even though MMA has equipment and capable of having an automated system they stick to manual system because they lack the knowledge on how to get such system. They are used on having their financial system manually because they used to have less used to have less student, but now with the increasing number of students many problems occur. Billing and recording the payments of the students has been done manually, recording are put into a columnar journal, they divide the whole book and give space for each student, and receipts has been done manually by hand. As a result their employee consume all the time just by recording. As we observe, they surely need to automate their system and see the difference for themselves. 5.3 Agile modeling Diagram 5.5 Problem Areas As we observe how their system work we discover a lot of problems. With the increasing number of student they encounter many problems especially to their accounting department. It has become a problem to the institution, students, and employees. Having their system manually and records are put in a book they can’t avoid data loss, time consuming because they have to scan for the whole book just to find the particular student, prone to errors, require continuous monitoring to ensure that each transaction is accounted for, and the cost to maintain manual systems it is considerably higher due to the amount of manpower needed, Summarizing data and writing reports take lot of time, data duplication: the same data gets repeated over and over since the employees find it hard to keep track of the documents, information and transactions, lack of security: since data is stored in filing cabinets it is freely available to anyone, common errors: when entering data customers might have acc identally switched details and data since it is hand written, repetition of work: if there are any changes to be made, the data will have to be entered again. at times the worker would forget to make the changes or forget that they had already altered it and might redo it again, its again time consuming, too much paper work: since everything and every details is written down manually in paper there will be too much paper work!, space consuming: since the data and paper is stored in filing cabinets it consumes too much place, as the amount of work done on paper increases the filing cabinets too increases, slow retrieval of data: the information of students and details are stored in different parts of the record book and so takes a long time to retrieve the data. Those where the problems we discovered with just observing in a short period of time. 6.1 System Overview A School cashiering and student account system is a combination of software and hardware that receives call detail and service usage information, groups this information for specific accounts or Students, produces invoices, creates reports for management, and records (posts) payments made to customer accounts. It is also safe because it is encrypted with password therefore only admins are the only one allowed to log in. The back end of  the financial system periodically combines records from the bill pool to create a single invoice that is sent to the students. The payments are posted (recorded) in the system. This system is inexpensive to maintain and cost-effective to enhance. 6.2 Process Specification 6.2.1 Data flow Diagram Database 6.2.3 System Design/Specification User of the system is required to Log-in before he/she can access the system for confidentiality. This is the main window of the system. It compose with three main part which are the student list window, the preview window and the buttons. The student list window literally list all the student which shows the student current account. The preview window shows basic information of the student selected in the student list window. The last part are the buttons, each buttons has its own function and has its own window. This windows will accept payments from the student. It will appear when the user selected a student and click the pay button. This window will accept any payment. Each bill has its own code therefore the student can choose what bill and how much they will pay, when the user click the pay button, a receipt will be printed and the data is updated in the database. This is the user account form it will appear if the add user account button a child button of the add button. It is use to create user account that can be able to access the system.