1.1 Introduction
An Electronic Invoicing System is a software-based business solution used to provide quick retrieval of customer’s invoice records on site or case of loss of original invoice. Computerized sales help provide better insight into which products are most popular. It also allows for enhanced marketing, stocking and oversight of critical sales objectives. Computerized sales and inventory systems save time for businesses by speeding up transactions while raising accuracy. This allows for confidence in accounting and accountability among employees as it is easy to verify how much money and what time transactions took place. They also allow for consistent experiences in terms of customer service. People know there is always a uniform interaction at the register that requires tendering payment, taking a receipt and transition of ownership of products and services. This generates confidence in a business and ensures ongoing consumer relationships. Computerized systems are the most common method of inventory control and sales processing in retail markets.
As a prelude to other parts of this study, this chapter will discuss the background upon which this study was initiated, the statement of problems that led to this study, the Aim and Objectives of the study. Others are Significance of the study, Scope of work, Limitations of the Study and Definition of technical terms.
1.2 Background of Study
The company Beverly Hills Supermarket is a small store that is managed by one person, the owner. The business sells different items or products like household equipment, drinks, grocery and other items that we can see everywhere. Like some other convenience store, the business does their physical counting of stocks manually. Technically, Beverly Hills Supermarket is only using a manual system that may cause to duplication of documents and work redundancy. The business is just depending on their manual listing of products and inputs of data which is possible to commit errors. The business cannot view their proper records of sales or income in a given time of the year. It also does not have its proper listings of product. In some instances, lost items are just being ignored by the owner. Beverly Hills Supermarket does not have any extra employee today. But before, the business had one cashier on that time. And basically, introduced the income and force to remove employees. How, the owner is the one who does all work in the business.
1.3 Statement of the Problem
Investigation reveals the problems of the existing Electronic Invoicing System, which entails that the Manual invoicing record keeping has resulted in many setbacks to the expected standard. The setback encountered includes:
- Time wastage in writing down everything bought by some customers.
- Partial or total loss of invoice by both business and customers.
- Under recording of invoice analysis.
- Inefficiency of some members of staff due to laziness in searching of the invoice.
- As a result of these problems, the manual system of invoice record information storage, input and retrieval is very clumsy: inefficient and unbelievable.
1.4 Aim and Objectives of the Study
The aim of the application is to develop an computerized invoicing software to carryout tedious work and activities performed by human beings, in which they end up misplacing and discarding some important files and costumers records. In achieving this aim, the following specific objectives were laid out as follows:
- To design a web based invoicing system to replace some extent of human role in cases of unavailability of job.
- To provide quick retrieval of customer’s invoice records on site or case of loss of original invoice.
- To model a computerized invoice system to enable proper invoice generating for customers and control this records.
1.5 Significance of Study
The significance of this study is to Beverly Hills that will provide easy-to-use and easy-to-use and easy accessed system thus transactions will be more reliable and faster that they do not have to hire another employer to do the job. It gives more accurate and secure records of sales and list of products.
Admin: manages the adding of stocks, updating the inventory, and determining the users of the system.
Customers: have the benefits of the printed receipts right after purchasing an item.
Future Researchers: would see the possibilities of upgrading the system.
Researcher: student, teacher, programmer and web-developer can benefit in this system through a detailed document
1.6 Scope of Study
The researcher is concerned with an electronic invoice system. It covers all the operations of companies and businesses in issuing receipts to customers which is the case study. It deals with the digitalizing business processes of issuing of receipts to customers for the services rendered or bought.
1.7 Limitations of the Study
During the course of this study, many things militated against its completion, some of which are:
- Time Constraint: The time frame given to accomplish this project was very short due to school academic calendar and it was carried out under pressure which made the researcher not to implement some necessary features.
- Establishment Policies: Establishment policies posed a serious limitation as most staffs are not ready to release information needed for this project work. There were lots of information needed from the staffs of this institution to enhance the study which took them time to release or they did not release at all for security purposes, hence the scope was reduced.
- Research material: availability of research material is a major setback to the scope of the study.
- High programming technique: The programming aspect of this project posed a lot of problematic bugs that took us some days to solve. Problem such as database connections using PHP, MySql, posed a lot of challenging.
- Financial Constraint: Insufficient fund tends to impede the efficiency of the researcher in sourcing for the relevant materials, literature or information and in the process of data collection (internet).
1.8 Definition of Terms
Customers: a person who buys goods or services from a shop or business.
Hardware: the physical tangible parts or component of a computer such as the cabinet, central processing unit, speakers and motherboard.
Inventory: is the goods and materials that a business holds for the ultimate goal of resale.
Inventory management: a discipline primarily about specifying the shape and placement of stocked goods.
Inventory Management system: the combination of technology(hardware and software) and processes and procedure that oversees the monitoring and maintenance of stocked products.
Sales: an exchange of goods or services for currency or credit.
Software: A set of instruction, data or programs used to operate computer and execute specific tasks.
Staff: A group of people who works for an organization
Transaction: An agreement between a buyer and a seller to exchange goods, services or financial instruments
Database: A collection of different files in a specialized way for easy retrieval and update.
Invoice: A nonnegotiable commercial instrument issued by a seller to a buyer. It identifies both the trading parties and list describes and quantifies the items sold, show the date of the shipment and mode of transport, prices and discounts (if any) and delivery and payment terms.
Computerized: Convert (information) to a form which is stored or processed by computer.
Customer: A person who buys goods or services from a shop or business.
Electronic: Controlled by or connected to a computer and as an activity or service this is “available on or performed using the Internet or other computer network”.
Record: Document that memorializes and provide objectives of activities performed, resulted achieved, or statement made.
