Automated Billing System For Precision Electronic Parts Inc.

Current Challenges

Overview: 

Precision Electronic Parts Inc. is a company that manufacturers and supplies equipment belonging to the field of electronics. With respect to this, a significant issue has been identified in the Ordering & Shipping Department along with the Inventory Management Department due to limited personnel working in these specific departments (Khera, Whig & Velu, 2021). This has led to the proposal of an automated system and eventually to this study.

Subject of the study: 

The following study has been documented to provide with the necessary details of the proposed system to be implemented at Precision Electronic Parts Inc. for automating the Customer billing through a proposed billing system in specific terms.

Objective and scope of the proposed system: 

The proposed system will be able to automated the billing transactions for every individual customer of the organization, to help all the transactions that are carried out at Precision Electronic Parts Inc. in specific terms.

Recommendations and justifications for the proposed system: 

The proposed billing system needs to appropriately protect all the financial data of every individual customer who will be a part of Precision Electronic Parts Inc. to help them offer with appropriate terms of integrity as well as privacy.

Currently, the system has been facing difficulties in terms of billing and transaction management with the significant increase of orders obtained by the manufacturing department and at the same time, the increasing number of clients in specific terms (Stein & Nakata, 2021). The current system is working slow and eventually is not able to live up to the increasing work pressure in specific.

The current system that exists at Precision Electronic Parts Inc. is mainly focused upon a set of manual processes that are carried out together by the Invoicing department, Accounts department and the IT department in terms of transactions and billing processes.

The primary problem that has been identified with respect to the current problem is insufficient personnel and existing inability to tackle the increasing number of customers and their orders received at the Manufacturing department present at Precision Electronic Parts Inc.

The current system basically operates upon a system of fixed costs as well as variable costs. The employees working at the departments associated with the billing process are offered with a fixed salary of $4,000 per month (Silverman, 2020). On the other hand, some sales representative are hired at the firm on a 60 days basis with a contract that promises to pay them $15,000 for 60 days in total.

Overview of proposed system: 

The proposed system will mainly automated the entire billing and transactions processes that are carried out at Precision Electronic Parts Inc. currently. However, the number of interacting departments involved into the process will be able to use the system to manage billing, transactions, generate customer and payment reports.

Project scope: 

The project aims to develop a billing system for Precision Electronic Parts Inc. to manage the financial transactions, billing and account reports in a better manner with increased efficiency.

Tangible and Intangible benefits: 

Tangible benefit: the proposed system will help Precision Electronic Parts Inc. to manage more orders and generate more income for the business with respect to the increasing order numbers (Müller, Vorraber & Slany, 2019).

Proposed System

Intangible benefit: the proposed system will help increase the departments manage finances and billing in a better manner without occurrence of human errors.

Feasibility analysis: 

The feasibility of the proposed system has been evaluated with respect to the revenue, which is required to implement the system into the daily business operations at the firm. With respect to this, the identified project budget is sufficient to implement the system.

Time and Cost estimate: 

Time: a timeframe of 2 months is sufficient for implementing the proposed Billing System at Precision Electronic Parts Inc.

Cost: a project budget of $65,000 has been allocated and considered sufficient for implementing the automated billing system at PEP (Steininger, 2019).

Requirements checklist: 

1. Generate transaction reports for financial transactions.
2. Generation of supplier information and data related to their transactions.
3. Show payroll details of employees for the company.
4. Generation of supplier details and pending payment.
5. Generation individual employee transaction.
6. The system should be protecting financial details of customers, employees and suppliers with appropriate security.

Data model: 

Figure-1: Data Flow diagram

(Source- Created by Author)

Process model: 

Figure-2: Business Process model

(Source- Created by Author)

The developed system will perform the following functionalities as a part of the functional requirements.

1. Generate bills for customer and supplier transactions.
2. Generate reports based on customer purchases and supplier payment information.
3. Payroll management of all the employees at PEP (Mendlinget al., 2021).
4. Make payment to suppliers with respect to the supplier invoices generated.
5. Place order to suppliers according to order demands.

1. The proposed system will be a product, which will be developed to fulfil business demands at PEP.
2. The system is a customer software application that will work as a business system.
3. In-house usage will be carried out.
4. Cloud computing will be chosen as the hosting alternative to ensure no occurrence of issues on the system affects business continuity at PEP and at the same time will allow the employees to access the system whenever required.

Personnel needs: 

1. Application developer, who will develop the software for the system.
2. Systems engineer to look after the system, identify faults and resolve the same.
3. Database administrator to maintain the database connected to the proposed system.
4. Graphic designer, to design the front-end and interface of the system.

 

Figure-2: Proposed Implementation Timeline

(Source- Created by Author)

Operating Cost: 

Components/Personnel	Operating Cost
System maintenance	$1,300/month
Systems engineer	$3,000/month
Cloud platform	$1,200/month
Tester	$2,400/month

The implementation cost of the system has been defined at $60,000, which have specifically saved $5,000 from the allocated project budget (Sachs et al., 2019).

Components/Personnel	Operating Cost
System maintenance	$2,000/month
Systems engineer	$3,000/month
Cloud platform	$1,500/month
Tester	$2,800/month

The life expectancy of the proposed system to be implemented at PEP has been assured for 15 years minimum. However, regular updates on the software components of the system is a mandate to keep the performance of the system intact without existence or occurrence of any issues.

Tangible: the proposed system will help PEP towards better management of finances. The automated manner by which the billing and transactional management is supposed to be carried out, will help the company to tackle the increasing number of orders in specific terms (Ibrahim, Ali & Besar, 2020).

Intangible: the proposed system is supposed to provide with a better income at PEP due to the company’s ability of taking more orders and delivering them on time in a quicker manner to keep the business running.

Precision Electronic Parts Inc. is a business organization that has been experiencing an increased number of orders. The billing and invoicing departments have been facing issues due to limited personnel not being able to keep up with the increasing number of orders. As a reason, the above discussion has clearly stated the Final System report that has provided with all the necessary information relevant to the newly proposed billing system and information obtained from the previous stages of the report.

References: 

Ibrahim, F., Ali, D. N. H., & Besar, N. S. A. (2020). Accounting information systems (AIS) in SMEs: Towards an integrated framework. International Journal of Asian Business and Information Management (IJABIM), 11(2), 51-67. (https://doi.org/10.4018/IJABIM.2020040104)

Khera, Y., Whig, P., & Velu, A. (2021). efficient effective and secured electronic billing system using AI. Vivekananda Journal of Research, 10, 53-60. (https://www.vips.edu/vjr.php)

Mendling, J., Berente, N., Seidel, S., & Grisold, T. (2021). The Philosopher's Corner: Pluralism and Pragmatism in the Information Systems Field: The Case of Research on Business Processes and Organizational Routine. ACM SIGMIS Database: the DATABASE for Advances in Information Systems, 52(2), 127-140. (https://doi.org/10.1145/3462766.3462773)

Müller, M., Vorraber, W., & Slany, W. (2019). Open principles in new business models for information systems. Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market, and Complexity, 5(1), 6. (https://doi.org/10.3390/joitmc5010006)

Sachs, T., Gründler, A., Rusic, M., & Fridgen, G. (2019). Framing microgrid design from a business and information systems engineering perspective. Business & Information Systems Engineering, 61(6), 729-744. (https://doi.org/10.1007/s12599-018-00573-0)

Silverman, B. W. (2020). Multiple?systems analysis for the quantification of modern slavery: classical and Bayesian approaches. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A (Statistics in Society), 183(3), 691-736. (https://doi.org/10.1111/rssa.12505)

Stein, A., & Nakata, M. (2021, July). Learning classifier systems: from principles to modern systems. In Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference Companion (pp. 498-527). (https://doi.org/10.1145/3449726.3461414)

Steininger, D. M. (2019). Linking information systems and entrepreneurship: A review and agenda for IT?associated and digital entrepreneurship research. Information Systems Journal, 29(2), 363-407. (https://doi.org/10.1111/isj.12206)