ACCT 326 Course Project: Accounting Information Systems (AIS)

 ACCT 326 Course Project: Accounting Information Systems (AIS)

The project will demonstrate your comprehension of accounting systems and your ability to effectively communicate in writing.

Assume you are a CPA with a small local practice in a major metropolitan area. You have three professional employees, all relatively new CPAs (recent graduates from UMUC), and an experienced office manager. In the past, your practice consists primarily of tax and write-up work, but you want to expand the practice. Based upon your desires to expand the practice, you have found a new client, a growing homeowners' association consisting of 150 homeowners, who is in the process of merging with four other homeowner associations within the next 6 months (which will increase the number of homeowners to 650). A part of the merger deal, your client will also oversee & manage the additional 500 homeowners; therefore, you must be prepared to handle this as part of your deal with the new client. The new client is expecting you and your firm to perform the following services:

1. Billing - Each quarter you have to send each homeowner an itemized bill. Dues are $50 per month ($150 per quarter). Late fees are 1 percent per month of the unpaid balance. The bills are mailed the first day of the last month of the quarter. Payment is due by the end of the

quarter.

2. Collection - You rent a post office box and will receive the checks there. You are responsible for depositing the checks (you have opened a checking account for the association).

3. Payments - You write about five checks a month. Besides your own monthly fee, there are monthly checks to a lawn maintenance company and a refuse removal company. There are also checks written for taxes, postage, supplies, and the like.

4. Reporting - You are responsible for reporting on all collections, all checks written, outstanding homeowners' balances, and quarterly financial statements.

5. Tax - You are responsible for preparing the association's federal and state tax returns.

6. Advisory - You are responsible for advising the board on an as-needed basis, especially in the areas of budgeting, purchasing, and investment.

Your firm is excited by this opportunity because it is a way to expand your firm’s practice (by offering this type of service to other homeowner associations) as well as adding additional staff.

In term of scope, for this specific opportunity, you are only required to automate the billing and collections services; however, the client is very interested in having automation in other areas. If you decide to automate additional areas (such as payments & reporting), you must be able to demonstrate the benefits for doing this; however, if you decide not to, you must clearly describe the process for handling these areas from a manual perspective. You will assume that the tax preparation will be done via a PC-based tax program that your firm already has in place.

Required: Using the methodology developed in this course, document and illustrate the system from an automated and manual function viewpoint. As part of your documentation, you will need to identify the specific system requirements (whether they are automated or no) in the areas of inputs, outputs, and controls for each of the service areas (for your paper, they will be known as business areas) that you are contracted to perform. This analysis will include you providing a mock-up of some sample documents and reports. Your finish product will be a paper, based upon the following outline.

1. Executive Summary

2. Introduction

o Purpose of New System

3. Proposed System Requirements o Billing

ƒ Input Requirements

ƒ Output Requirements

ƒ Controls Requirements

o Collection

ƒ Input Requirements

ƒ Output Requirements

ƒ Controls Requirements

o Payments

ƒ Input Requirements

ƒ Output Requirements

ƒ Controls Requirements

o Financial Reporting

ƒ Input Requirements

ƒ Output Requirements

ƒ Controls Requirements

o Tax

ƒ Input Requirements

ƒ Output Requirements

ƒ Controls Requirements

o Others

ƒ Input Requirements

ƒ Output Requirements

ƒ Controls

4. Proposed Manual Functions

5. Make or Buy Decision

6. Challenges to Automation

7. Appendix

Listed below is a summary of each section, including projected page lengths.

• Section I – Executive Summary: In this section, you will provide an executive summary of

Section II – VI. Your summary should be limited to 1 page.

• Section II – Introduction: In this section, you will provide narrative regarding the current business problem and how automation may or may not address the problem. This section should be between 1 – 2 pages.

• Section III – System Requirements: In this section, you will document the specific requirements (input, output) required for each of the respective business areas (collections, payments, etc.). As part of each business area, you should identify what data (at the field level) you would need to collect and well as what reports (including what data should appear on the reports) to support transactional processing for each business area. This will be the biggest section of your paper and there is no page limit. As you compose this section, play close attention to the following items:

o When you specify the input data requirements, you will need to specify the actual data  element (such as homeowner name, homeowner address) and what the data element refers to (such as the full name of the homeowner, the address at which the homeowner  resides at). You can list these elements in a table.

o For the output requirements, you simply just need to identify the respective data element from the input (no need to recap the description).

o For control requirements, you will need to identify 3 controls that need to be implemented to secure the business area. You will need to explain the control in some sort of degree. • Section IV – Manual Functions: In this section, you will identify and discuss those business / accounting functions that are required that can not be automated and explain why. This section should be between 1 – 2 pages long.

• Section V – Make or Buy Decision: In this section, you will discuss whether it make sense to purchase a system (like QuickBooks or Peachtree) to handle this or to develop this system from scratch, using tools like Microsoft Office (Excel/Access) and how much effort it may take to implement the system. This section should be about 2 pages long. You should propose a specific QuickBooks or Peachtree option as part of your BUY decision. In term of Microsoft Office, you will assume that your firm’s resources are capable of developing a system like this.

• Section VI – Challenges to Automation: In this section, you will identify and discuss the challenges to developing and maintaining this system. This section should be 2 pages long.

• Appendix: In this section, you will provide a mock-up of two sample forms; two sample reports; and two sample financial statements.

Your grade for this project will be based on the quality of both content and presentation, considering the following:

• Discussion of all required points related to the outline above.

• Ability to apply concepts from this course in order to design a solution.

• Ability to conduct the appropriate analysis based upon the limited information that has been provided.

• The creativeness of your solution.

• Formatting considerations, such as

o Well-written and free of grammatical and typographical errors

o Professional, neat appearance

o Ability to use specific formatting guidelines (as listed below)

In terms of formatting guidelines, you can rely on the APA writing style or you can follow the below guidelines:

• Inclusion of an appropriate title page & table of contents.

• Use of double-spacing for all text.

• Use of standard margins (1”) throughout the paper.

• Use of standard font and font size (12 point).

• Appropriate usage of page numbering on all pages excluding title page & tables of contents.

• Appropriate use of headings.

• Appropriate use of footnotes, if citing references.

Reminder:

• This is an individual project and not a group project. You are not allowed to consult current and former ACCT326 / 328 students regarding how they would develop a solution. Therefore, the solution presented must be your own recommended solution.

• The only outside research required is related to the selection of a software solution (Peachtree / QuickBooks).

• Your ACCT326 textbook is a guide to help you; however, the textbook will not provide you with answers to the specifics that this assignment calls for.

• You should be able to begin working on this assignment after we have completed Chapters 4 – 8.