1.1 Introduction
The Expense Manager is a multi-purpose finance related application intended to run on internet accessible devices. It is designed efficiently to give an individual the best suggestions for finance planning. The features of the app are designed in a way to help an individual for better finance management planning so the user can keep track of expense records, analyze and optimize stipulated budget. In this application, the user’s data will be collected authenticated permissions and analyze and study their pattern expenses in certain category or by distinct kinds of spending that can be used for studying market trends. These analysis patterns can be derived using some data mining techniques such as clustering, classification and association.
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
In this world of growing technologies everything is digitalized. With large number of money transaction it is difficult for user to keep track of all your transaction. The main aim of this paper is to manage personal and group expenses. Not many applications provide a variety of features within a single application. An application developed that will keep record of user personal expenses, his/her personal contribution towards group expenses, top investment options, view stock market, read authenticated news and grab the best ongoing offers in the market in popular categories.
The idea of developing this paper in platform arises with the lack of financial awareness in the country as well as frequent concerns being experienced by people to manage their money properly. Some of the problem includes selecting the right investment option suitable for them, reading authenticated financial news, splitting bill among friends and groups, having a good stock market analysis interface and being aware of the latest ongoing promotions at various ecommerce websites. Some of traditional methods used to tackle this problems in daily life is the use of sticky notes. Proficient people deal with problems by using spreadsheet to record expenses, this is easy when the data is small but when the data is large it becomes unmanageable.
In the existing system, there are problems in certain areas like there no proper data consistency, some critical inputs may be missed and manual errors may occur. The data recorders and handlers have a hectic experience in managing the large chunks of data so, it is believed that a mobile application with a good user interface can easily handle these problems as it can give comprehensive view and the app is intelligent enough to suggest the best options as per the budget selected by the user.
1.3 Statement of Problems
Investigation reveals the problems of the Online Expense Manager System research work which are as follows:
- Not many applications provide a variety of features within a single application.
- There is no proper data consistency, some critical inputs may be missed and manual errors may occur.
- The speed of generating receipt for goods sold and processing data manually is slow and prone to errors.
- The current process is stressful to end-users due to time factors
- Producing the receipt printout for each transaction is costly for a business while keeping them only to find them faded, damaged or lost and therefore of no help is unfortunate to customers.
1.4 Aim and Objectives of Study
The aim of the study is to Design and Implement an Online Expense Manager System. In achieving this aim the following objectives were laid out as follows to design and develop an application software that will:
- Keep track of all an Organization daily transactions and money lent or borrowed.
- Suggest the best investment options and offers in popular categories.
- Display stock market and read latest authenticated financial news.
- Keep track of the files can at any operate the organization and client’s financial report.
- Generate accurate customer’s cash receipt for goods/item sold.
1.5 Significance/Justification of Study
The proposed system will be beneficial to Organizations, Enterprises and Business Managers by syncing the application with personal email IDs or social network account which help will serve better recommendations and personalized marketing campaigns. The features of the app are designed in a way to help an individual for better finance management planning so the user can keep track of expense records, analyze and optimize stipulated budget.
1.6 Scope of Study
The study focuses on the Design and Implementation of an Expense Manager System that will keep track of all an Organization daily transactions and money lent or borrowed using Rarban stores Ltd Port Harcourt in Rivers State as a case study.
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.
- Research material: availability of research material is a major setback to the scope of the study.
- Frequent power failure: This made the researcher append more money on fuel to ensure sustainable power.
- 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
Acquiring Bank: This is a bank or financial institution that accepts payments for the product or services on behalf of a Merchant.
Computer: This is an electro-mechanical device that is capable of accepting data as inputs, stores it, processes the data and outputs it as result or information.
Credit Card: It is a payment mechanism that enables consumers to make their online purchase.
Data: Data are raw facts which undergo processing and become information. They are also the simplest unit of information that can stand on its own.
Digital Certificate: It is a certificate that enables a merchant to do on-line business and it is been issued by a corporate body.
Gateway: This is a device that connects two computer networks that cannot be connected in any other way.
Internet: It is an interaction of computer networks connecting other networks from computers, companies, houses etc.
ISP Internet Service Provider: This is a company(s) that provides internet access to homes or business users.
Merchant Account: It’s a contract under which an acquiring bank extends a line of credit to a merchant who wishes to accept payment card association brand
Program: A program is a sequence of instructions written in a computer to execute a certain task and solve a problem. A program must possess clarity, be specific, effective and user friendly.
WWW (World Wide Web): It is a multimedia interface that connects us to resources such as documents, e-mails, chat, web sites that are available on the internet with the computer.
