Design -Consideration for possible solutions - Comparison of alternative solutions.

Justification for the chosen design

For this project I have chosen to use MS Excel, primarily for its functions: as it can help achieve all of the objectives, which I have set.  Excel, for obvious reasons (stated above) is far superior to a paper based system and is better than Access as it is more flexible.  Access was designed to handle large amounts of data, whereas Excel was designed t process data, so since within my project, the bulk of the work is data processing, I felt that Excel is the most appropriate package to use.  The main features of Excel can also be hidden from the end user and the sensitive region locked, so that the end user cannot accidentally destroy important data or calculations.  The final advantage (and sometimes the most influential) is the cost of Excel, compared to Access, so Excel is definitely the sound choice to make.

Spreadsheet design

Data descriptions

Refer to design sheets

Inputs

The end use will be inputting data from invoices, PORs and sales/receipts.  Data will include amount of stock purchased and amount of money spent, amount of stock used and amount of money made.  Also information from sales will have to enter, however the dish numbers is all they are required.

Outputs

Outputs include:

        Purchase order requisitions

        Graphs and pivot tables

        Emails

Please refer to attachments

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Menus and navigation

Note that all user forms will have an additional button labelled “help”, which will act as a link to the user manual.

Security

Although this system does not much sensitive data concerning persons, it does contain quantities of ingredients for the dishes, which needs to be kept secret, otherwise all restaurant food would taste the same.  So to stop the data from leaking out, it has to be protected.  Under the data protections act, the data kept by any persons, which is sensitive, is to comply with the data protections act.  The act contains 8 main principles, and they are that the data should:

• Be fairly and lawfully processed;
• Be processed for limited purposes;
• Be relevant and not excessive;
• Be accurate;
• Not be kept longer than necessary;
• Be processed in accordance with the data subject's rights;
• Be secure;
• Not be transferred to countries without adequate protection.

The data in the system can be protected by setting up a password, at the load-up screen of Excel, this is function of Excel so is extremely easy to implement.  Certain parts of Excel can also be hidden if another password is not correctly entered.

Test plan

Testing of data in a system includes 3 areas: normal (within limits), extreme (at the limits of the range) and erroneous (not valid data).  Tests for all 3 area have to be done to see how the system deals with the problems, for example: in a spreadsheet as many figures are linked together, if one was to be corrupt, then a whole set of data will be wrong and this could cost the company a lot of money.  So to narrow down the chances of error, validation is brought in.  This is where a set of rules is applied to a cell/s, where the conditions will only accept data, which satisfies all the criteria, e.g. a number between 1 and 100.  This way, the user know that the extreme limits are 1 and 100, so if a value of 101 or ksaj is entered then the validation is bring up an error message informing the user of the error.

Also testing of navigation is needed, as the user will need access to all areas of the system, although a large part of the system will be locked, macros will be able to unlock areas, which would allow the user to alter information.  So these macros need testing.  All the processes also need to be tested, to see if the stock is actually deducted when the sales are entered.  All these areas need testing I depth to ensure that the system is functional and stable.

Test plan