Project Milestones

Examples of Milestone 1, INFO355, Song

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INFO 355: Systems Analysis II

Winter 2016

Project Category: Analysis and Design

Title: A Simplified Accounting Management System (SAMS) Milestone 1

George Bush, Bill Clinton, Hilary Clinton, and Barack Obama

1. Problem Description A small local accounting company would like to create a simplified accounting management

system (SAMS). SAMS will keep track of only those concepts that are related to calculation

of income of the office such as clients, billable items, payments, and invoices. SAMS,

however, will not include other office-related activities such as employee payrolls, purchasing

office supplies, office expenses such as travel cost, or other complex tax-related matters. In

the office, there are two types of clients, individual clients or business clients. Individual

clients usually pay once a year when they pick up their annual tax returns. Business clients

usually pay the regular monthly service charge once a month for their routine service.

Business clients may also pay to the office when they receive a special service such as tax

audit, special tax preparation, license application, etc. The monthly service charge is different

from a client to another, depending on the business type, volume of transactions, and other

factors.

In this office, an item that is charged to clients is called a billable item. The fee for some

billable items (e.g., applying for a tax ID) are pre-determined at a fixed price and used

consistently. The fees for these pre-determined billable items can be changed only by the owner

of the office. However, the fees for some billable items are determined by case by case by the

owner of the office. The office sends invoices to business clients once a month by computing

the total outstanding balances by summing up all the unpaid or partially billable items. Clients

may pay fully, partially, or may not pay on time. Some clients may also pay in advance the fees

of several months or even one year. The office receives only cash, checks, or credit cards.

SAMS should also be able to generate several reports such as “show the payment history of a

client,” “show clients with all the outstanding balances,” “show the total billing of this

month”, ‘show the total payments of this month”, etc.

A billable item is initially called “uninvoiced”. Once an invoice for the billable item is

sent out, the status becomes “invoiced”. The item could also be discounted or cancelled.

A client can be searched by one of three ways: either by client number, by last name, or by

just browsing the client list. The system shall be password-protected. SAMS has the three

type sof users- accountants, secretary, and the owner of the office. Accountants can create

new clients, edit client information, and create new billable items. The secretary in SAMS can

do any operation the accountants can do, except creating new billable items. In addition, the

secretary will generate invoices, reports, and enter payments. Discounts or cancellation of

billable items, however, can only be done by the owner.

IN-Scope: clients, billable items, invoices, payments, reports

OUT-Scope: employee payrolls, purchasing office supplies, office expenses such as

travel cost, or other complex tax-related matters.

Examples of Milestone 1, INFO355, Song

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2. Requirements 2.1 Functional Requirements

1. Maintain client

a. Create client

b. Edit client (Update monthly service charge)

c. Delete client

2. Search for clients by one of three ways

a. by Client Number

b. by Last Name (Speed searching)

c. by Browsing

d. Sort clients by some criteria

3. Keep track of billable items of a client

a. Add monthly service charge

b. Add the special service charges

c. Discount a billable item (only by owner)

d. Cancel a billable item (only by owner)

e. Change the states of a billable item

5. Generate Invoices

a. View invoice

b. Print invoice

c. Save invoice

d. Convert into PDF

6. Manage payments

a. Enter payment

b. View payment

c. Edit payment

d. Delete payment

e. Print receipt

7. Generate reports

a. Show payment history of a client

b. Show clients with all the outstanding balances

c. Show the total billing of this month

d. Show the total payments of this month

c. Generate monthly/annual report for a client

8. Generate mailing labels

9. User login and log out

10. Quit/save

11. Meta functions (by Administrator or Owner)

a. Maintain users

a.1 add users

a.2 delete users

a.3 edit user profile

b. Maintain standard (reference) billable items

b.1. Create a specification for a new billable item with name and charge

b.2. Edit specification of a billable item

b.3. Delete a specification of a billable item

c. Backup the data

d. Import/export the data

Examples of Milestone 1, INFO355, Song

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e. Maintain Help features

2.2 Data Requirements 1. Client

Client#, First Name, Last Name, middle initial, Client type, Business Address and Home

Address, Business Phone, Home Phone and Mobile phone, Client Business Type, total

outstanding balance, first business date, monthly service charge

2. Billable Items

Item#, description, fee, date entered, initial amount, balance, status, discount, discountdate

3. Invoice

Invoice number, billing date, billing amount, due date

4. Payment

Payment number, payment amount, payment date, payment type, bank name, check number,

CC info (last 4 digits, name, billing address, security digits)

5. User

First Name, Last Name, middle initial, ID, PW, userGroup, beginDate, status, recentUsedDate

6. Special Service Rate

Service number, service name, default_fee

2.3 Business Rules and Logic

Business Rules: They are rules on events and the system.

1. The fee for billable item is determined and can be changed only by the owner of the office

2. Only business clients receive an invoice once a month.

3. A cancelled billable item will not be deleted, but marked as “cancelled” and this value must

not be included into the invoice.

4. Pre-defined billable item is picked up from the special service rate table except the monthly

service charge.

5. A payment is applied to from old billable items first and then to newer billable items

6. The SAMS data will need to be backed up to an external device (USB, HD, cloud) daily at

3AM.

Constraints on Data and Objects: These are rules on data and objects.

1. Identify mandatory fields (e.g., Client number, first name, and last name) 2. Client type is either Individual or Business 3. Payment type is either Cash, Check, or Credit Card. 4. Valid values of Status of Billable Item = {uninvoiced, invoiced, partially paid, fully paid,

cancelled}

5. For a new billable item, status is set to “uninvoiced”, balance = initial amount. 6. The outstanding balance will reflect the total summation of balances of all the billable

items except those whose status is marked as “cancelled” or “fully paid”

7. When a payment is entered, the initial amount stays the same; the balance will be reduced by the amount of the payment.

8. The Status state of the billable items will be changed automatically from “uninvoiced” to other status by operations.

9. A client number consists of 6 digits. 10. All input email address must have @ symbol. 11. Passwords must be at least 8 characters and contain at least 1 number or a special symbol.

Examples of Milestone 1, INFO355, Song

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2.4 Non-Functional Requirements

 Usability: a) The system will be a screen-based GUI application. b) Menus should be organized in a hierarchical manner. c) The entry found after searching should be highlighted. d) Must include a menu bar at the top e) Must include a log off function in the upper right-hand side of the screen f) All data deletion needs to have a confirmation dialog. g) Business clients and individual clients should be flagged with different colors. h) SAMS put in idle for 10 minutes are locked and must be opened with a password. i) Menus should be grayed out if the user does not have a privilege to use. j) Display alert message if a mandatory data is not entered. k) Display invoices through a template for consistency. l) Fields should be able to be resized. m) Required fields should be indicated n) Data are entered through forms; forms are displayed fully on the screen and should

not require no or minimum scrolling

o) Entries found after searching should be highlighted p) Help options with FAQ should be available

 Reliability a) Should support multiple users simultaneously b) SAMS should be able to handle at least 0.1 million clients and 1 million

transactions for client

c) Backup should be done daily d) SMAS should include error prevention. For example, if the user wants to

delete client information, a dialog box should appear, asking if the user is

completely sure that he or she wants to delete the information.

 Performance a) All searches/sortings should be completed in approximately 1 second

 Security a) All users must log-in with an ID and password b) Three consecutive failures in log-in put the ID in hold for 5 minutes. c) Password recovery should be available. d) The system will automatically time out if the user has not entered a selection

in a certain amount of time.

e) There will be 3 groups of users.  Group 1 is accountants. Ensure that Group1 users can create new clients, edit

client and create new billable items

 Group 2 is secretary. Ensure that Group 2 can do what Group 1 users can do, except creating billable items.

o Ensure that Group 2 users can also generate invoice, reports, and enter payments

Examples of Milestone 1, INFO355, Song

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 Group 3 is the owner. Ensure that Group 3 users have all the privileges of Group 1 and 2. Only Group 3 users can delete clients, discount or cancel billable items.

 System environment

a) The system will be implemented in a LAN environment running Windows Business Server 2011.

b) SQL Server 2012 Enterprise Edition will be used as a backend database. c) Sufficient network bandwidth needs to be available.