Design And Implementation Of An Electronic Invoicing System

Introduction

1.1 Background of the Study

Electronic Invoicing System is the process of managing inventory in order to meet customer demand at the lowest possible cost and with a minimum investment, Byoungho (2004). A successfully implemented invoicing control program takes into account such things as purchasing goods commensurate with demand, seasonal variation, changing usage patterns, and monitoring for pilferage, Ellram (1996). A preliminary step in the process of invoicing control is to determine the approximate costs of managing invoice. According to Langabeer and Stoughton (2001), these costs include such expenses as storage costs, inventory risks, and the loss-of opportunity costs associated with tying up capital. Inventory management is a vital function to help ensure the success of manufacturing and distribution companies and lately retail stores. The effectiveness of invoicing management systems is directly measurable by how successful a company is in providing high level of customer service, low inventory investment, maximum throughput and low costs, Ellram (1996). The challenge of productive invoicing management is to support an upward trend in sales while keeping the investment at the lowest level consistent with adequate customer service. Control of invoice, which typically represents 45% to 90% of all expenses for business, is needed to ensure that the business has the right goods on hand to avoid stock-outs, to prevent shrinkage (spoilage/theft), and to provide proper accounting, Khan (2003).

Articles stored and later used in this way are known collectively as inventory. In large organizations, it is usual for inventory to be in tens, even hundreds of items valued at tens of millions of naira. Given this state, it has become natural to have inventory items represented in computer maintained files. Computer especially microcomputer has become an important tool in all types of business from one man operations up to large international business firms.
Every business manager need to know what he purchased, what he sold and what is remaining in the warehouse. For this obvious reason, large, small and medium organizations, companies and government, as a whole need computerization of inventory control. The speed at which the administrative and paper work in retail stores increases on daily basis calls for a corresponding need for a quick and effective device to meet up with the demand. This project hopes to link inventory control and computer system.

1.2 Problem Statement

The current inventory control at Gamzaki store is completely manual which result in inaccuracy and inefficiency in record keeping of availability or otherwise of goods in the store. The process of updating the inventory requires the sales personnel to monitor stock level of each item. Anytime a stock level reaches a point that is too high or low, an action is instituted which include to write down stock status report or to generate a purchase order. There are a lot of problems associated with using this manual method which include time wasting, difficulty in calculating the total amount of items sold, too much paper work and difficulty in updating every time a change is made, hence the need for automating the inventory system.

The proposed automated system will take in data of stock items like stock number, product name, quantity, cost price and selling price as inputs. The system process and update records accurately within a short time and store it. After processing these inputs, the system will be able to generate sales report, stock report, payment receipt and transactions history report as outputs.

The new system will be able to generate report regarding the details of stocks available in the store and print out the various reports generated via a printer. Also, security provision like the login authenticity will be provided so as to curtail unauthorized access to the system.

1.3 Aim of the Project

The main aim of this project is to develop software that will automate the current manual invoice control system through incorporation of computer to eliminate errors relating to inventory control calculations and management.

1.4 Objectives

To provide system that keeps constant updates about total number of stock available in the store and constantly each and every items in the stock that is going down low to out of stock, the system alert as soon as is due.

To provide software that save time and reduces energy consumption by making complicated processing and inventory sales report easy and without delay.

To help track sales, hence staffs are constrained to sell at a fixed price and remit recommended price.

To be able to discover several goods in stock that are about to expire in stock. The software gives the flexibility to know every single item in the store, its Quantity and their expiry dates at just a click to the software.

The software provide easy way to print out weekly/monthly summary reports, showing how much have been used for different stock items from a computerized stock system.

1.5 Scope of the Project

The program is designed to take care of a typical control system, which deals with invoice control of Gamzaki Store and other retail stores/supermarkets alike having similar problem of inventory control.

1.6 Limitation of the Project

The study was faced with a problem of getting all the information from the respondent because of potential cynical suspicion. Poor keeping of records caused some data not to be available and finally some respondent were not able to give the desired responses as they were not much familiar with adequate knowledge on invoice management.

1.7 Definition of Terms

i. Item Name:

This is a name given to each product. This name is unique to the product by which it identifies.

ii. Stock Balance:

This is the number of goods that are present in stock

iii. Cost Price:

This is the initial cost of purchased goods

iv. Selling Prices:

This is the cost at which goods or a particular item is sold after being purchased.

v. Receipt:

This is a document prepared to be given out to a customer for confirmation of goods purchased.

vi. Transaction History:

It is used to show all the list of daily sales and stored each record for reference purpose.

vii. Change Password:

It allows the management or system admin to change a password.

viii. Low Stock Balance Alert:

It is a reminder that keeps you updated whenever a stock balances is going down or low.

Chapter Five

Summary, Conclusion and Recommendation

5.1 Summary

It can be observed that computer applications are very important in every field of human endeavour. With this new system, the difficulties encountered with the manual inventory control system of Gamzaki Store are overcome. The automated inventory control system reduces the workload of the staff, saves time and increases efficiency. The records of the company are safe and secure, distribution process is well managed, errors are minimized, and reports generated for management are accurate thereby increasing the profit margin. On a general note, this project covers necessary process involved in designing any inventory control in a retail shop. It is aimed at providing a means of helping staff of manage sales and inventory. The approach used involves the consultation of different individuals ranging from the owner and staff of Gamzaki Store. The method of implementation was with the use of visual studio 2010 (visual basic.net) as the programming language, SQL as the database engine. The basic user attention was given priority when designing the system. Therefore, this project if embraced would address the problems of sales and inventory management.

5.2 Recommendation

I recommend this automated inventory control system to the Gamzaki and any other store that still carry out their operation manually. This system will be useful since it is computerized and will promote effective, efficient and improve service delivery. The use of this software developed for the control of inventory as it will make their work easier.

5.3 Conclusion

Anything worth doing is worth doing well. For a project of this kind, all that was discussed and done was to the best of ability and reach.

The benefits derived from this work cannot be over emphasized as tremendous amount of new knowledge was revealed and acquired in the course of study for this project work.