PROJECT REPORT

On

Computer Inventory Management System

By

Vishal Kumar SinghMCA

9501001941

CERTIFICATE

Complete Analysis&

Report

Computer Inventory Management System( CIMS )

Report compiled by

Vishal Kumar SinghMCA

9501001941

DECLARATION

I, Vishal Kumar Singh, student of ICFAI University, MCA program with enrolment number 9501001941, declare that the project and the report thereto submitted by me, is being the genuine effort devoted by me towards the completion of the same. Also the project is not been submitted to any other institute or educational institute for achieving degree of any kind. I certainly declare that the project being the no-duplicate of any existing projects as to what available on internet or from any other source.This Project Report is the result of such project being done by myself and is the reply to the partial fulfillment of the MCA degree, to be provided by the ICFAI University.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Thanks to netGuru Ltd, for providing me platform which helped me to complete the project in a consistent and successful manner. Mr. Vishal Kumar Singh of Xenius Solutions has continuously helped me throughout to maintain the standards and integrity of different areas of the project, which otherwise could have troubled the project.

ABSTRACT

This project is intended to automate the business unit in terms of maintenance of stock, accounts and information related to transactions, customers, and vendors respectively. The main purpose is to inform the user of the system to gain as much of information in as much less time as possible. Also the system is easy to use and keeping in mind the category of business users, which more or less assumed to be non-professional in terms of use of IT services- i.e., since most of the small scale users have little or no knowledge of computer-based systems, so this system is intended to provide ease to its user. Information they need the most can get out as report on which they can react as per the availability of time and make necessary changes whatsoever they can, onto their business to make more money.

Since the system is simple in its incarnation so it better suits the small business users. It lacks the advanced features like cross boundary interaction (more than one branch), which sometimes makes the task of the user somewhat complicated, with regard to coordination and synchronization of tasks.

The system designed has all the necessary features which are required for these classes of businesses to operate effectively. The software from its standpoint can be operated only as desktop version; it lacks connectivity of any type to other point. In the small scale where business don’t have more than one outlet, this system suits more them than those where cross branch integration is necessary for running the business.

Here we are trying that, the time where not many small businesses is equipped with IT related products, to bring all those units within the domain of IT so that they can take advantage of computers and its services to make their business more better than before and feel the difference, what they were before the use of such services.

If they don’t justify the vendors’ payment and could not serve their customer better, the outrageous expectations to survive in the market will be in vain.

Keeping in mind all these factors and the cost factors, the Indian economy, the software is being designed to perform the basic function, despite it lacks certain features- just because to make the software more affordable so that more and more users can be insisted to take advantage of computers to perform better.

If we deny the cost factors, we can say that the software lack various functionality which other high-end software provides. The main features which are not included in the software is remote connectivity to data sources to other parts of the same organizations, advanced features related to remit and/or dispatch online transfer of payments between parties concerned, multi-user aspects have been totally ignored, designed primary to provide offline services only, which in today’s world is insignificant.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. INTRODUCTIONAbout inventory management.How software relates to inventory category?Beginning with the software project.For whom the software is developed?

2. OBJECTIVE

3. PROBLEM STATEMENT

4. HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS

5. ANALYSIS & DESIGN OF THE PROJECT

6. SCREENS AND REPORTS

7. CONCLUSIONS

8. BIBLIOGRAPHY

INTRODUCTION

1.1 About inventory management

We all know that today’s business totally depends on customers, from not only the local markets but also from international markets. The fast globalization of markets demands great care in tracking the needs of the customers and fulfilling those needs not only in a timely manner but economically as well. These businesses are almost always trying to cater the needs of their customers, so because customers are the foundations on which these business premises stands.

Good business builds up from management of all aspects of a particular business, one of them being the inventory, without which the successes of the business are in vain. A lot depends on market but still lots depend on economic and effective management of inventory. Successful businesses are those where the inventory has just enough stock to cater all the needs of its customers and still makes money enough to run the business. Also if those inventories are managed in such way as not to block much of the money, then the business is free from financial hazards, because the money they need the most are readily available to operate freely.

“Inventory” to many small business owners is one of the most visible and tangible aspects of doing business. Raw materials, goods-in-progress and finished goods all represent various forms of inventory. Each type represents money tied up until the inventory leaves the company as purchased products. Likewise, merchandise stocks in a retail stores contribute to profits only when their sale puts money into the cash register.

In a literal sense, inventory refers to stock of anything necessary to do the business. These stocks represent a large portion of the business investment and must be well managed in order to maximize profits. In fact, many small businesses cannot absorb the type of losses arising from poor inventory management. Unless inventories are controlled, they are unreliable, inefficient and costly.

1.2 How software relates to inventory category?

IT sector is not more than a market place where services and products are sold, so whatever is applicable to other sector, it is applicable to IT infrastructure as well. Basically this software is intended for small business users who want to have information about their materials tracked, so as to facilitate their normal operations. This package brings all maintenance of different entities of business to one unit. For example, whenever the business needs particular goods it first investigates the material which falls short and need to be ordered, then after positive reply, it prepares the requisition slips,

then further proceedings are carried out at various places in the firm-as receiving of goods, verification, ledger entries in appropriate and so on.Here we try to bring all such facility to make the users feel that everything works like an inventory management.

The typical features of inventory management are as-

Creation of purchase orderReceiving goods as per what has been ordered.Verification of goodsEntries to the stockPrepare bills for payments to the vendors

Thus we have seen the most common of activities which are carried in any business units. The software referred to here provides all these basic procedures.

1.3 Beginning with the software project

As mentioned above this project is intended for small businesses, where they don’t have adequate resources to operate efficiently. Today, IT has revolutionized each and every aspects of life. How can the small business remains unaffected, so this project, though not vast in scope but it opens up the face to them to use computers in their daily business operations.

Since the project is designed to suit small businesses than the large one. So we discuss the main functions the software provides to its users.

Routine stock management capabilityMaintaining transaction historyAccounts managementSecurity administration through the use of ACLsReporting capabilityCustomers and vendors information

Routine stock management capability

Stocks are the basic building blocks of any business. Small or large, every business needs to maintain stocks to cater the needs of its customers and these stocks should not be wasted anyhow. So tracking the level of stock is utmost essential. If stock is low in quantity then in an urgent situation the demand cannot be fulfilled in timely manner and if it overruns then also there is danger of wastage and blockage of working capital of business, which would otherwise utilized more efficiently. This software provides this management capability by just specifying the level of any of the items.

These properties are

Reorder levelReorder quantityInitial stock quantity

In the first case, the minimum level is specified. If the stock falls below that mark the items are highlighted with some color marks to indicate the shortfalls. Next, a quantity is set for ordering to the vendor, so that whenever any order is created each and every time the quantity need not be mentioned and lastly the initial stock are maintained for dealings.

Managing transaction history

Both the customers and vendors transaction history are kept in the form of sales invoice and purchase orders respectively. When any goods are sold off a sales invoice are generated and kept as a record for tracking profit, outflow of materials and similar is the case with vendors. Whenever there is any purchase order a respective entry is being created for later reference, for materials and payments.

Accounts management

Business needs to keep track of inflow and outflow of cash, so it definitely needs to manage both the accounts receivables from customers and sundry debtors and accounts payables for vendors and sundry creditors. The difference being the surplus which the business owner can take away with him.

Security administration through the use of ACLs

The software is intended to provide security from unauthorized access of important data from non administrative users. The administrators can provide the permissions by creating list of users and assigning the permissions to them for accessing the system data. But he himself has the full access and creates and deletes the user accounts at his will.

Reporting capability

Business cannot succeed if they don’t have proper and timely information about what is going on and the benefits and liabilities accrue to them. Only by following the reports, they can ascertain the health of their business. The managers of big business need not watch the fine grain details but are interested in reports. In our perspective, the software provides powerful reporting capability to help its user to justify there positions.

Customers and vendors information

Customers and vendors are the vital resources of any business and need to be properly handled. Information regarding current and past customers and vendors are also important since the data mining on these resources can also provide some benefits to business at any point in time. Keeping this into view, software provides benefits to users in managing customers and vendors information.

1.4 For whom the software is being developed

Not every type of business needs every services required by large business enterprises. Small business might need different types of services and functionality. Basically this class of user need tracking the level of stocks, inflow and outflow of cash on a daily basis, tracking orders of customers, generating orders to vendors when goods fall short or are needs to be replenished. Generating reports as and when they required and backing up data from time to time.

If the answers to all these questions are positive then the software is fully utilizable by this class of users.

This software lacks certain qualities like multi-user capability, multi-tasking capability, remote connectivity to other desktop machine and ATM transaction for online transfer of payments to and from vendors and customers.

OBJECTIVE

This software is designed for small business, who don’t know much about computers and services offered by them, but yet take the advantage provided by the computers. In India, the use of computer-based software products in small Market segments of daily use are not yet bloomed, but upcoming time will change the notions. Keeping all this point in consideration, software provides several benefits to its user.

Ease of use

Users who are not capable of using computer on daily routine, cannot operate software easily but this product provides most of the routine as inbuilt functions like automatic generation of numbers, date, setting price automatically when selecting vendors or products.

Rich GUI

Interactive and attractive user interface provides benefits of providing most of the services at a single location and at an easy location. In our project, the left pane contains the menu which allows the users to select and navigate any of the modules like customers, vendors, items, stock, purchase orders, and all too at a single click

Security

The owner sometimes does not wants that the employees could access the vital information about the secret information the company maintains. So there is a provision of adding user permissions and also enables the administrator to create and manage user and assign permissions with different options to him.

Reports

Reports are vital components of any business, so it provides reporting capability to its users. The user of the system can create reports related to customers, vendors, transaction, creating orders, accounts, stocks etc.

Accounting

The software provides such a level of services so as to gain access to the profitability level, by gaining insight into what is payable and what is receivable. Also it provides options to track the customer payment history.

Information

Information regarding customers and vendors are done at a single click of a mouse, without having to specify several parameters as are needed by some major software. Businesses are required to maintain certain records of its good customer and vendor base, so here the software comes useful.

Stock management

Stocks are needed to be tracked at any cost. Since the success of business rests on its stock management capability. If businesses neither keeps excess stock nor are under-stocked and yet caters all the needs of its customers and make intact the working capital, then the business is said to be on right track. Right quantity of stock means right business. User can specify the level of items to order and reorder level so that whenever the goods fall short it provides indications of such level and take necessary action to overcome the problems.

Future Possibilities

Since the project is in its incarnation and also users requirements are never ending so it must be kept updated in order to be functional and workable for current users. But since software development is carried on in an evolutionary way, there are still lots of area to be worked upon.

Following are the list of features which are supposed to be incorporated in its future release.

Credit Card facility for online transactions.Barcode scanning features to ease and speed-up the process.Web enabling the software so that up-to-date information can be shared across all parts of the world as far as organization is concerned.If the system is made internet enabled, then secure communications of secret information has to be made, so there is a provision to implement Secure Socket Layer (SSL) for remote communication of secret information.Since this system is limited in terms of generating purchase order for items which are below reorder level, it can be modified in future release to be fully automatic with no human intervention to generate orders and handling of billing and invoices.If the system is to be used commercially then it must includes features like trial version, full version with licensing and ownership capability, in which case a key will be provided to make the system workable.Enabling the software to incorporate the multi-user and multi-tasking capability and mechanism to drill down and roll-ups, where the software is used at more than one branch of the same company or have multiple branches spreaded all over the country.

PROBLEM STATEMENT

The software product is designed to provide only the most essential services needed by its users. The main idea was to make the software easy to use and targeted for only small scale users. So the features which are the most necessary in this category are missing due to reasons as mentioned above and have high cost factors. In case of the business operates from more than one location, this software is not suitable at all for them.Because the software is designed for small users the features not included in it cannot be termed as disadvantages but rather are termed as drawbacks.

Despite the certain advantages, the drawbacks are as mentioned below-

Single user

The software is designed for single user only as a desktop version. In case if the business operates from more than one place, then it will not be easy for synchronizing the daily activities of both the places manually.

Multi-tasking capability

Today most of the database-enabled software products are created with multitasking capability. Because in medium to large scale products, if one tasks comes after another then the user have to wait most of the time while the speed of the computer is enough to perform more than one task at a time. So if the users want to perform more than one task simultaneously then this software lacks that feature.

Multi-users capability

In business which has many users, who work simultaneously, need access to data stored in central server at a single point of time. In that case while one is adding the record other at the same time needs to update the same records, there is a need to synchronize the operations of these users, so as not to compromise the integrity of data.

Online transaction

Customers also want to avoid keeping the risk of keeping cash whenever they make purchase from shops for a big amount. Today many and many shopkeepers are using the facility for online transfer of payments from customers and they do the same with regard to vendors when they have to pay. Our software lacks this feature in this version.

High-end reporting

The software lacks features of three dimensional reporting capabilities. Today large business prepares reports keeping several dimensions in view at a single point of time, so that maximum information is gained at a very less cost and time. Three dimensional

analysis of data offers capability to generate reports from multiple dimensions. Our software does not provide such a level of reporting except two dimensional reports.

Unification

If the two branches of the same company use the same software then also there is lack of provision to merge data to consolidate the business data, to see an overall impact the company have from two branches.

If we now ignore this multiple location operations then this class of software is most suitable for small business and covers all important aspects of features required by these businesses.

HARDWARE & SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS

The software comprises of the back-end and front-end combinations with rich graphical user interface. The front-end is built using any RAD tools like Integrated Development Environment (IDE) namely visual studio of Microsoft Corporation and back-end composed of database management system and database, supported by query processing engine to solve the request of the user of the system, developed by any of the vendors of RDBMS companies like Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server. Any combination of front-end and back-end works, but the only requirement is that these back-ends should follow the regulations provided for structured query language (SQL) and database connectivity like ODBC or JDBC for java database connectivity.

Front-end is best developed using IDE like visual studio, because they provide the capability to quick develop the rich and powerful user interface. Although, there is limited capability to change the back-end configuration, since what is to be done, should be confined to standards developed and there is limited scope for any changes in query logic. Despite this fact, SQL still provides English like query processing engine for extracting and manipulating data managed by the organization.

Different requirements are to be considered for creating database-enabled software products. Today’s memory hungry software needs large support for powerful CPUs and disk space to operate at a fast speed. For example, the .NET platform needs many gigabytes of free space to be installed and extensive support for memory, without which no processing can be done at higher speed.

In our case, the minimum disk space required is what is required for the installation of back-end RDBMS software like Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle corporations Oracle. Only the library files needed to run the software are required for running the front-end software but extensive disk space is needed to store the data, and database management systems.

Hardware requirements

Processor – Pentium 4 or higher.CPU pulse – 1000 MHz or more.RAM – 1 GB recommended or more physical memory.Hard Disk – The space required to install SQL Server 2000 + as disk space necessary to store the data.Keyboard – Windows compatible standard 108 key.Mouse – Windows compatible 2/3 button mouse.Printer – optional

Software requirements

Front-end tools – SDK tools like Microsoft Visual Studio 2008.Back-end tools – Microsoft SQL Server 2000 or higher versions with query analyzer.

ANALYSIS & DESIGN OF THE PROJECT

Various domains and entities are needed to be included to cover the entire project, although the entities included in the project may not look as vast in their entirety as in reality they are. The analysis includes aspects related to real world entities like customers, vendors, transaction, certain processes related to processing of orders, payments, stock and other related activities thereto.

The elements related to the projects are so included, have various roles to play in various dimensions. As for example the business is directly related to customers, if there is no customer there is no need to do all such things. Similarly, if there is no vendor what we would do with accounts, stocks and all such things related directly to vendors. And so on, if we include these things and look to all of them unitedly, we will find that all these are related and play equally important roles.

Thus analyses include all these factors into consideration and justify the importance of them equally.

Before proceeding to the details of the project we need to consider various aspects of these entities of the project and their relation with each other.

Entities included into the projects are as follows –

CustomersVendorsAccountsUsers of the system (Owner)StockTransactionReports

Let us discuss the details of each of these entities so that the purpose of their inclusion and what role they play for the system are properly understood.

Customers

Customers are the main entities on which all the business rests. If there are no customers, then what for the business is all about. Customers play the pivotal role in any business whether they may be public or private sector business, profit making /non profit making business, they all need customers to justify their existence.

We need to take into account the factors related to customers like who will be our probable customers, what their choices are, what they according to seasons, how frequently their demand changes, what their budgets are, how frequently they buys new materials, what items to be included so that the business runs continuously and still caters the need of their customers, etc.

If the business considers factors like this or similar to these then the success of them cannot be curtailed.

Generally business needs to classify their customers into various classes as – regular, flying, profitable, non-profitable, informative, rich, poor and so on, so that after classifying them as per these categories, the needs to stock the items can be considered more effectively, so that with minimum amount of stock as maximum numbers of customers can be fairly satisfied as possible, and without hanging up the capitals.

In our projects we include the customers aspects so that we can maintain transactions related to them.

Vendors

Vendors are the utmost essential elements of any sort of business, be it wholesale or retails, local or international, profit oriented or non-profit oriented and so on. Without vendors one cannot be able to start the business. So the primary function of the entrepreneur of the business is to locate the vendor(s) to run the business. They are the vendors who supplies goods to the business, receive payments on behalf of the goods they supply. Business needs to fulfill the duty towards their suppliers in a timely and efficient manner, so that any future transaction is not hampered and the growth of the business remains intact.

In our project we maintains vendors records so that we can track the cost of materials involved in the business and what level of payments are due to them.

Accounts

The business maintains accounts related to customers, vendors, the accounts related to government duties etc. business also manages the accounts for tracking their progress from time to time. Accounts are generally classified into two major categories, namely as- accounts receivables and accounts payable.

Accounts related to vendors and outside parties like government are commonly called as accounts payables and accounts related to customers and debtors are called accounts receivables.

Also when business manages accounts there are also certain motives behind that. These being the progress, turnover on an average, profits for the year etc.

In our project certain real life aspects regarding accounts maintenance are ignored, but in its future release it will be possible to consider all those factors.

Users of the system (Owner)

The subject matter of the system-the user. User may be the administrator or the normal users with some or all permissions granted to them, but may still be restricted in what can be granted to them.

If the user is the main system administrator then he possesses the highest rank as far as permissions to use the systems are concerned. Only the administrators can create the users and can define Access Control List, most popularly known as ACLs. These ACLs are used to restrict the users of the system. They have the full privileges to add, modify, and delete the users as per their will.

If the user is the normal user then he being guided by certain restrictions related to adding, changing and deleting the records in the system. Sometimes customers are also granted temporary roles to access the system for limited interactions.

In our project we include the users’ aspect of the system, so that the users, who are not authorized, cannot tamper the system data and make the necessary data on system unusable.

Stock

Every business except service providers are required to maintain certain quantity of stock to operate efficiently. Business maintains stock for fulfilling the needs of their customers and earns something in lieu of their services. These stocks exists in various forms as finished, semi-finished, raw materials, etc so that if the goods are not in their final state can be transformed into the ready-to-use goods, and later can be directly used by customers.

When goods are in their semi-finished state, they just block the working capital of the business, until they are transformed into the final product, to be consumed.

In our case the project need not consider such level of details. We will just need to consider the finished goods to be sold to customers.

Transaction

The system definitely going to manage the transactions, related to customers and vendors, since both have certain stake associated with them.

When we have dealings with the customers we will manage transaction related to them and create entries in accounts receivables ledger, and vendors’ transaction will be managed in accounts payable.

Whenever we need to consider these transaction aspects we can definitely have some information related to either particular transaction or to every one at all.These transactions will be considered to know the status of the business as a whole.

Since the project is not going to include more than one interface, so we will not consider the transaction in as much details as if the business could have contained more than one branch and spreaded over several different locations.

Reports

Every business needs to have access to quick information and as such we need to provide more importance to manage reports and assess the standpoint of the business. Since our concern is to enable as much business units to make use of IT, we need to provide a solid foundation as far as reporting is concerned.

We need to provide reports on these entities as we have mentioned earlier in this report. These reports will give the proper indications as to what way the business is moving.

The project provides reports on customers, vendors, accounts, stock, transaction and ACLs so that the user of the system can take care of the information as a whole and operate the business in more efficient manner.

A COMPLETE ANALYSISON THE STRUCTURE OF PROJECT

The project in its entirety contains the various entities and modules related directly or indirectly to business point of view. A complete discussion requires a great understanding of these entities so that we can come to a conclusion as to what role they play together.

Analysis includes DFDs, ERDs and context diagrams to explain what is going on in the system.

Context Diagrams

Context diagrams are basically used to provide the details of the system from the view point of overall functionality of the system and without revealing the inner workings of all those entities concerned to the business.

In our project, we have included one main process named ‘Inventory Management System’ which covers all the aspects related to perform the business namely the transaction, procurement of goods, managing accounts and operations to be performed by the users of the system, all without displaying the inner working of all these modules, either as a single unit or collectively.

Later it includes the main entities related to the projects namely as – admin, the users of the system; customers; vendors; stock, for inflow and outflow of goods; transactions; accounts, both accounts receivables and payables.

Below is the context diagram for the system under study.

The figure above displays that how such entities are related to the system and arrows indicates that there is some information flow in both the directions.

The main processes which are in the center of the figure are just the block, which contains the main functionality and will be revealed in first and second level of DFD with more details respectively.

Data Flow Diagrams (DFD)

DFD are used to represent the flow of information in and out of the system under study. DFD uses several notations to show off the task. The notations are rounded rectangle for process, rectangle for entities, arrows for data flows and open ended rectangle for data store.

The main DFD of the project is as follows:

Second Level DFD

Since we are not considering certain real life situations related to inventory just for making the project more suitable to small scale business, we will not delve further into the first level DFD, because if we go into such process we may have to skip certain aspects which we have considered in the second level DFD. The main processes included in the project under study are as-

Purchase processingGoods verificationInventory management

Sales processingAccounting

The data stores included in the project under study are as-

Vendors DataCustomers DataOrdersReceivedStockPurchase OrderItemsSalesSales InvoiceAccounts Receivables

The entities included in the project under are as

VendorsCustomers

ER Diagrams (ERD)

The ER diagrams explain the relations between various sources of data to each other and cardinality of such relations which are one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-many.

The main ER diagram for the project is as:

Detailed explanation and assumptions in making second level DFD

Having defined all the processes, entities, data stores and information flow, we are now in a position to define each one of them in more details and can show what the relations between each of them are.

Before we go to such details we need to have explanation in short what the system is going to perform and how the processes operates in relation to each others.Since each process is more or less related to other ones we need to consider the detailed workings and input and output of process and work they perform together to form the system as a whole.

How it works

Initially, the business manages the list of items and vendors with whom to deal in the course of business. After dealing with all that matter procurement process begins, the details of which are as mentioned below.

When the management of the business recognizes the shortage or low level stock of any items or when the business first starts to commence, it will investigate into the stock level. After that when the reports confirm as to the acquisition of materials, the need will be notified to the inventory management department, which creates an entry into the purchase order data store.

When the person responsible, makes an entry in the respective table, the next department comes to the action.

After that point the purchase department reads the information from the purchase order table and informs the respective vendors for procurement of goods.

Later procuring the materials the purchase departments creates an entry to the vendors’ payable account i.e., the due to vendors with respect to transaction performed. Also the entries are added to the orders table. Then the purchase department forwards the goods to

the Goods Verification department for further checking the goods as per the procurement list.

If everything is found as per the orders created, the entries are mentioned in the received after being comparing the items with the orders table, so that if discrepancy is found it can be notified to the vendors without any delay.

Similarly, the received table is being read by the Inventory Management department to update the stock.

Finally, the sales department gets in touch with the stock to operate the business as they are supposed to do. Since the sales department deals with the customers, they handle all the major interactions with the customers and if the transaction succeeds, respective entries are being passed to the accounts department for further proceedings like charging the customers accounts for their due, updating the accounts receivables and so on.

The customer related data are also managed by the sales department, and various other day-to-day information is also managed by the same department too.

When any sales are made the Sales processing department takes care of the same and entries related to that particular transaction are made to sales, sales invoice and related tables respectively.

Similarly we can explain what are the different tasks performed by the various processes, in the course of business. Here we can give the inflow and outflow of data and/or information from each of the processes with more explanation. Each such processes create information/data to be used either by some other processes or to be consumed by different data stores. Also the data stores are being accessed by these processes but are never directly accessed by the external entities like customers, vendors as mentioned in our case. Whenever these entities need to access information stored in data stores they can do so by way of some processes. Thus these processes are the main source which provides the interfaces for interaction.

In the text that follows we will explain the roles played by business processes. As mentioned above the main processes used by our projects are as-

Inventory Management Process

This is the heart of our project. Since our project takes the form of some sort of inventory management, we need detailed explanation of what the project is going to achieve by way of this process. The first assumption that we make is that the management of the business decides as to what the business will be all about? What are the various materials that the

business will employ in order to operate? Who will be the probable vendors from whom the materials should be gathered? What the policies will be in all these regards?

After deciding all these necessary factors, the first thing the management does is to prepare the lists of materials and probable vendors who supplies those and finally generates the requisition slip to the purchase department, and makes an entry to the purchase orders table.

The primary function of the inventory management process, up to this point is to initiate the transaction for acquiring materials. The table below will indicate the main function performed by this process.

Information Data Stores Direction OperationCreation of purchase order Purchase Order Outward WriteReceiving information Received Inward ReadMaintaining items Items Both BothUpdating stock Stock Both Both

At other point of time when the goods are properly received by the purchase department and all other verification as to the accuracy, quality, payment clearance etc has been performed, this process starts one more activity related to updating the level of stock, which has been revealed in the second row of the activity tables.

Purchase Processing

The next task is to be performed by the purchase process, when the requisitions are being received for further processing. The main task of this one is to notify the vendors about the requirements of the organization in terms of goods or services. Also the process is responsible for maintaining the records of different vendors related to organization, yet the information related to accounts is being transferred to accounts department. When the goods are received those are forwarded to the goods verification process.

The table below specifies what are the various tasks performed by the process.

Information Data Stores Direction OperationReading request for goods Purchase Order Inward ReadRequest for goods to vendors Orders Outward WriteInformation related to vendors Vendors Outward Write

The information related to vendors’ payments are being remitted to accounts department where the entries for particular transaction are recorded. After receiving the goods

respective entries are being created in the orders table where from the task of further verification belongs to next process.

Goods Verification Process

When all the formalities till receipt of goods are completed the bills, challans etc are forwarded to this process, whose main duty is to inform the purchase process if any discrepancy is found, else the process creates an entry in the received table after matching it with the orders table being edited by the purchase process.

Information Data Stores Direction OperationReading orders table Orders Inward ReadCreating receipt entry Received Outward Write

Sales Processing

The area of focus is the sales process, whose main task is to interact with the customers and managing data related to customers. The transactions being performed by the business units need to be recorded for accessing the soundness of the business as a whole. This process also manages the task related to accounting and task pertaining to stocks. Of the entire task the utmost important is to take care of generating revenue for the business, also indicating the problems areas where business needs to improve on.

Information Data Stores Direction OperationCreation of customers data Customers Outward WriteCreating sales invoice Sales Invoice Both BothCreating sales entries Sales Both Both

Accounting

Accounting is the most important department of any business and is being divided into 2 main divisions- one related to receivables and other to payables.

In our project we need to keep track of both these divisions. When sales to customers are made, a respective sales invoice is generated and after final transaction an entry is made in both the customers’ records and accounts table. Similarly, we do the same with respect to vendors.

Information Data Stores Direction OperationCreation of receivables entry Accounts Receivables Both BothCreation of payables entry Accounts Payables Both Both

Thus we see that the processes, data flows, entities all works as a single units and failure of any one of them jeopardizes the integrity of the system as a whole. Each element is tightly coupled with other and output of one process is being an input for others.

Entity Relationship Diagrams

Databases are used to store information in structured and consistent manner. If these data are not managed consistently and redundancy is introduced either intentionally or due to lack of structure then the main purpose of creating and developing ERDs will fail and thereby the performance of overall system fails.

ERDs are basically used to establish relationship between the tables used to store data and in case if there is weak relation then it may not help the user of the system to extract the data necessary with minimum redundancy and thereby creates problems in fetching data from the database. We don’t find much problem in our project because there are small numbers of such data tables exists and it is designed only with fewest numbers of entities possible. Had this not been the case, that is, if there is large number of users in the system and number of entities are expectedly high then any misdirected relationship between any of the tables might have created problems.

The ERD uses entities as rectangles and relationship as diamond shapes and one entity can be related to other entities through these relations and also can have cardinality appearing in both sides of the relationships. For example, a student registers for many classes and class had many students registered for it. Thus, here the relationships are ‘registers for’ and ‘had’ for students to class and then from class to students respectively and the cardinality can be expressed as many-to-many.

On our project, the number of such entities and relationships can be expressed as mentioned below.

The entities are as-

StockOrganization or companyCustomersVendorsItemsAccountsEmployees

Each and every entity has a relationship associated with them towards each other. Since the existence of one depends on the existence of others. For example, if there is no customer, then is no purchase and the company will not have the accounts related to customers and so on.

Having mentioned the entities and relationship we are now in a position to describe the relationship of them with each others

Stock

We are not going to show the two way relationship but the one which is more relevant to project. If we take entity stock, then it can have relationship as

Stock Managed by Company

And

Company Maintains Stock

Both the relationship exists and is very true, but since we are considering the organization or company we will ignore the first relationship and explain about the cardinality between the stock and the other. Since the company ‘maintains’ stock, there is one-to-many cardinality, one company manages stocks of many items.

Company

The area of our concern is company, the entire pivot on which the business rests. In our context, we annotate the company with various other terms as business, organizations in different contexts, so as to explain the things better. The various roles played by this entity includes-

Company Employs Employee

And

Company Sales Goods/Items

And

Company Maintains Stock

And

Company Manages Accounts

In the first term, the cardinality is one-to-many. A company employs an ‘n’ number of employees.

In the second term, the cardinality is one-to-many. A company sale more than one items.

In the third term, the cardinality is one-to-many. A company manages stock of more than one item.

In the fourth term, the cardinality is one-to-many. A company manages accounts of customers and/or vendors, and that too may be of more than one.

In case if we come out of the main context, we see that this relationship cardinality changes from ‘one-to-many’ to ‘many-to-many’. For example, account of a single customer is managed by several different companies and lots of similar other examples.

Customers

A company manages information of more than one customer at a single point of time. The business units manages the accounts of customers for several reasons, not be considered here. The relationship which is mote pertinent to our project is as below-

Customers Purchases Items/Goods

And

Customers Holds Accounts

Cardinality being zero or more in the first case, since customers may or may not buy an items at a given point of time, other things being kept constant, and secondly, it may or may not hold accounts with the company. So again, we consider this as zero or more, with respect to that particular company.

Vendors

Vendors too have same relationship with the company as customers. Vendors supplies goods and have accounts with the company.

This entity holds at least two relationships with respect to business, and cardinality is the same as of customers

The relationships are as

Vendors Supplies Items

And

Vendors Holds Accounts

Items

Items can be one or more but we can assume the possibility of zero cardinality. It may have several relationships included with it, namely as- Items are being supplied by vendors, purchased by customers, and maintained by company, so this entity has all directional relationships with other major entities.

Items Supplied by Vendors

And

Items Purchased by Customers

And

Items Makes up Stock

Accounts

Accounts have three relationships associated with it. Firstly, the account is being managed by employees; secondly, company manages customers’ and/or vendors’ accounts, thirdly, customers’ and vendors’ holds accounts

Account Maintained by Employees

And

Account Hold by Customers

And

Account Hold by Vendors

And

Account Belong to Company

Employees

Employees have two main roles to play in the organizations in our context. First, employee sales items, employee manages accounts

Employee Sales Items

And

Employee Manages Accounts

The main point to be noted here is that even if we changes the order of entities in the relationships, we are not able to keep the cardinality same in that direction, we have to change it as well otherwise, it will reveal some other meanings to the joining.

Note:- The left hand text and the right hand text represents entities and middle one represents relationship between them and these entities can be related to more than one and can have multiple relationships attached with them.

DATABASE ARCHITECTURE

Now we have described the DFD, ERD, context diagrams we are in a position to explain the actual database architecture. First of all we will explain about the number of tables and their relationship to each other, so that we can explain how the data to be drilled down further from these tables and how such joining can help to grab much of the details with minimum redundancy possible.Below is the figure which reveals the joining and relationship to each others. The tables which is being used as part of the project are as

CustomersVendorsItemsStockPO [Purchase Order]OrdersReceivedSalesSI [Sales Invoice]AR [Accounts Receivables]SerialsAdminUsers

Relationship diagram

The yellow keys in the figure above shows that the field beside that are the primary keys and the arrows connecting the tables are related to others with the primary and foreign keys. The arrows with the large yellow head indicates that the table holds the primary key and the tail indicates the table which hold the fields which are the foreign keys to these tables. Also one important thing to note is that the relationship diagram possesses a spanning tree like structure, where any of the table can be traversed or joined by any other tables.

In order to clarify the details we are giving the tabular structure of fields and data types of all these tables and certain field settings and later on we will show which table is related to which other.

DATA DICTIONARYA simple data dictionary which reveals the name of the columns, data types, and few property which is directly relevant to the storage of data in respective fields.

Admin

Orders

AR

Customers

PO

Serials

Received

Sales

Items

Tax

Vendors

SI

Stock

SCREENS AND REPORTS

Login screen

When the user first starts the system the first screen that the user sees is the login screen which appears just after the splash screen of the project.

The user login mode is divided into two main categories

The administrator loginThe user login

The restrictions which occur in user mode are being specified by the administrator of the system and they may or may not grant such level of permissions as they had. Only the administrator had the full privilege to admit, reject new user and grant permission to operate the system. For example, read, write, update, delete permissions to the users are all granted by the administrator of the system.

User interface of the system

This is the user interface of the system under study. The user interface consists of five top level modules namely

Vendor informationItem informationPurchase ordersInvoicesCustomersStock register

Purchase Order form

When the users want to purchase goods from vendors then he may create those with the help of purchase orders form, where items supplied by respective vendors appear in the next screen with various other options.

After the first step, the next screen asks for items which are needed to be ordered, as shown in the next figure

Manage Purchase Order Form

In this form the user can enter different items supplied by particular vendors. The figure contains the items listed by vendor Intel for example.

Sales Invoice

A sales invoice to record sales to customers.

The figure below indicates the invoice number which is used to track down the sales committed to particular customer. Here we have two options for tracking customers- one is to add new and other to find an existing one.

The next screen which appears after this asks the user of the system to enter for quantities and items and options for payments on the same screen.

Record Sold Items Form

Here the user specifies the items, the quantities, payments made by the customers and so on

The next screen onwards provides us to gather the summary details of the transaction made by particular customer. And this form also provides means to edit any payments remitted by customer on behalf of the transaction.

Invoice Manager Form

This form contains the summary details of particular transaction made and there is provision for returning the goods and making any further payments thereto.

Manage Payment Form

Here the entries can be made as the customers pays off. Whenever the customers pay-off his dues the payment history can be watched here.

It provides two options for editing payments; one is to add new payment and other one to edit existing payment through previous screen.

REPORTS

In this section we see the few simple reporting capability the system has to deliver to the user.The report pertains to few entities like

Vendors Items Customers Stock-in-hand

Vendor Report

Report Caption Vendors Report

A sample report containing the list of vendors maintained by the organization

Customers Report

Report Caption Customers Report

A sample report containing the list of customers maintained by the organization

Items Report

Report Caption Items Report

A sample report containing the list of items maintained by the organization

Stock-in-hand Report

Report Caption Stock Report

A sample report containing the list of stock maintained by the organization

TESTING PROCEDURESCIMS has not been designed to work in a shared environment, so unlike most of the other software of similar capability which usually runs on shared environment, most of the features which are an absolute necessity of multi-user environment are missing and the synchronization of database is hardly been considered.

So the platform under which the system is being developed pertains to single user or multi-user environment where the possibility that all users work simultaneously is totally ignored, otherwise the consistency of database is possible. The procedure which is being followed for testing the software in related to a single server and a client-end which together are tied together as fat client.

TESTING REPORT

CONCLUSIONS

The main business of the software is to assist the users who previously do not had any exposure to computer or the services provided by computers. Despite the basic features the software need to be enhanced with several advanced features that normally enterprise applications have. If the success of the software needs to be brought up then more detailed analysis has to be done, surveying more number of small users and asking from them what additional features they want and also how much they are ready to pay for those services.

Normally, the business peoples needs to spend openly in acquiring technological advancement but only if those technologies does not outweigh the profits made by using them as one of their business parts. So we definitely try to incorporate the advanced features as discussed in the drawbacks of the software section earlier, so that when we return the system includes every aspect the users wants.

The main conclusion is that the software should be as generic as possible, because only that factor can cause the software to be utilized, where is normally need not be used and thus provides more business.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A Concise Introduction to Software Engineering by Pankaj Jalote

Analysis and Design of Information Systems by James A. Senn

Pro C# 2008 and the .NET 3.5 Platform by Andrew Troelsen

Systems Analysis and Design by Donald Yeates and Tony Wakefield

Internet Resources – Google, Wikipedia etc.