Design And Implementation Of A Computerized Financial Accounting System For A Hotel Industry

INTRODUCTION
Finance is the life wire of any business organization. It is required for the execution of production, sales and administration of a business operation. As a discipline, finance is concerned with the acquisition and administration of the use of the firms’ funds as well as profit planning and control financial analysis is inevitable for the effective planning and control of any firm.
To effectively plan for the future, the financial manager should be able to assess the financial position of the firm and relates this to its confronting investment opportunities. Since funds are scarce, financial analysis helps the financial manager to assess the returns on investment accruing from ploughing the firms’ assets and thereby efficiently allocating resources.
However, financial accounting is the employment of the firm’s balance sheet and income statement to establish some relationship between one figure and another in order to highlight the strengths and weakness of the concerned business. The balance sheet of a firm is also called the financial position because it shows the position of the business in monetary term at a given point in time while the income statement show how the position depicted by the balance sheet has been attained. The results of financial analysis are normally expressed as financial ratios, which could be broadly classified as liquidity, leverage, activity and profit ratio. The suppliers of the firm’s funds and the investing public are usually interested in these ratios. But the nature of interest expressed on the firm determines the ratios to be emphasized by each concerned parts. This implies that different people emphasize on different ratios and as a result financial analysis means different thing to different people.
For instance, creditors are interested on those ratios, which measure the ability of the form to service their debts and pay the principal as and when due while the equity owners are interested on the profitability ratios. The financial manager occupies a unique position in the firm as he should be able to computer interpret and explain these ratios to various interest groups in the firm when the firm requires funds from outside sources, the financial manager should be able to use the relevant ratio to convince investors to supply their funds. Also the financial manager should be able to justify the reasonableness of some investment or project being under taken by management before the shareholders.
However, the cost involved in the employment of a financial manager makes it mandatory for small-scale companies to engage the services of a financial consultant. The increased use of high-speed computers in various facets of business should popularize the use of financial ratios in business decision. This is because computer would provide the necessary equipment to handle problems associated with voluminous maze of financial data due to lack of time or more.
This study therefore, aims at the development of a database for financial statements and a set of programs to computer, store and retrieve various financial ratios for some companies.

STATEMENT OF PROBLEMS
The Nigeria Company Act of 1968 stipulate that all registered companies in Nigeria should file their audited annual balance sheet this will guide the investors in the development of the funds and to provide basis for company taxation. But there are some problems facing the financial accounting of any hotel. These problems includes:-
1. Illegal use of money cards – some managers has taken the privilege of using both credit and debit cards to steal companies money and some do not know how to use this cards thereby causing problems to the hotels.
2. One of the major loopholes of an un-computerized financial accounting system is its ability to fraud a company. This poses a problem to the management of a hotel.
3. Some companies employ inexperienced managers who are not professionals in the field of computing and this will restrict the objectives of the computerized system to a certain limit.
4. Insufficient fund- to set up a complete computerized financial accounting system requires a huge amount of money. Some hotels find it difficult to afford or cannot afford it.

OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
1. The use of password and other security measures enable a company to prevent unauthorized user of the files.
2. The use of money cards by some customers will act as a security measure against armed robbers and other inconveniences ca-use by the bulkiness of their money.
3. Information can be stored for future use and can also be retrieved at an electronic speed. This will prevent the time wasting while using the manual files.
4. The computer has been proved without any doubt to be far more accurate than either any know person or any previous machine performing mechanical operation with data.
5. Computer works at incredible high speed. It performs millions of calculations, sort and combines information in different ways within a second.

DELIMITATION OF STUDY
This study is focused on Modotel, one of the prominent hotels in Enugu, owned by private individual. It has been chosen as case study because it is expected that given it size, modernity and its promoters. It will satisfy our data need. In examining the management of the hotel, this project is limited to the financial aspect of the management.

LIMITATION OF THE STUDY
I was constrained by menu factors in carrying out this research work. This was despite my intention to make more research on the issue. Firstly, I was constrained by time factor. The project was not given enough periods in out timetable. And there was some academic constrains that is the combination of lectures, exams and writing of the project proved cumbersome. Secondly, due to the prevailing economic order in the country in general and the agency business in particular. I had not enough fund to finance more extensive research on the subject. Thirdly information were made difficult to obtain by attitudes of some personnel to conserve their duty of secrecy, hotel management did not permit the disclosure of account programs.

ASSUMPTION
It is assumed that a computerized financial account will be of great advantage to both the hotel management and government.
Data can be easily documented and retrieved in most economic manner.
Computer are never tired of carrying out a repetitive task as financial manager may be and everything is done at an electronic speed.

DEFINITION OF TERMS
DATA
Raw information when data is processed, it becomes information.
HARDWARE
The physical components of a computer like the keyboard, the video display unit (VDU) etc.
MICRO-PROCESSOR
The part of a computer system that performs the major activities like reasoning calculation etc.
PROGRAM
Series of logically related instructions arranged for the computer to execute or run. It controls the activities of the system (i.e the system program or the application program).
PASSWORD
A word supplied to a computer in order to gain access to the system or a file.
SOFTWARE
The logical components of the system like the program. They are not visible.
ASSETS
These are those items, which belongs to a business so long as they have value the values can be objectively measured and the ownership by the assets can be proved.
LIABILITIES
These are those item s owned by the business.
BALANCESHEET
This portrays the assets and liabilities of a business at specific point in time. It also is known as the position.
INCOME STATEMENT
This is a summary of all transactions, which have taken place during a period, resulting in either a profit or loss figure.