Identifying the users
I was asked by Winston Newton to produce a payroll system which is effective and has high data storage capacity in order to manage with high demands and linked directly to the booking system which also should be upgraded. For each session recorded the payroll system should be able to allocate the number of hours worked to the designated teacher and work out the weekly wage. The new system will provide pay slips with the employee details, the number of hours worked and their wages. The booking system will inform the senior instructors when their next training session will take place and which members has registered for it. The senior instructors are the main target audience the booking because the output will be directed to them. The booking will be taken over the phone and on site by advisers at the reception and admin staff. Winston and Wayne Smith are the Academy managers so they will review the payroll system and the booking system.
The two advisers are data clerks have very basic ICT and never used a spreadsheet before. Those two will need training to introduce them to the use of spreadsheets, so that they can use the system efficiently.
The deputy manager and the admin staff are both more advance and have used lost of software application. They apparently don’t need training.
Justification of reasons for the Solution
At the moment the current system consists of manually calculating the details on a form that the employee fills in and is signed by their manager.
The employee fill in a form with his details (employee number, surname and forename, grade, hours worked…) which will be hand over to the staff in charger of the payroll. They will hen manually calculate the weekly wages by checking the session given and multiplying the hours worked by the pay rate (£7/hour for normal time and £10.5/hour for overtime) and deducting any taxes applicable (18% if under 18, 25% if 18 and over and 20% if over 60, national insurance contribution which is 7% of the gross pay).
At the moment the current payroll system is done by hand. This causes a lot of limitations to the business, because it is slow, there is a lot of paperwork involved and it’s very hard to find every single employers details. They are often errors in calculation that occur within the payroll and lead to the employee wages being incorrect and delayed. As the system is paper based and stored in files, so there are issues with back up and security.
Client Requirements
The new system has these key features:
- Allow employees details to be entered (employee number, surname, forename, grade, national insurance number and date of birth) and saved in individual sheets.
- Get hours worked directly from the record on the booking system
- Send reminders about when sessions are happening and the number of student
- Output the payroll details in the form of a pay slip for each employee, this will contain employee number, surname, forename, date of birth, grade, overtime wage, gross pay, tax deducted, national insurance deducted and net wage.
- Calculate gross pay for each employee (normal wage + overtime wage).
- Calculate net pay for each employee (gross pay – all deductions).
- Calculate and deduct tax (18% if under 18, 25% if 18 and over and 20% if over 60)
- Calculate and deduct national insurance contribution (7%).
- The number of normal hours in a week is 40 and this will be paid at the hourly rate that is based on their grade.
- Overtime is paid at the one and a quarter of the hourly rate.
- The maximum number of hours that a worker should work is 60. If the number of hours goes above 60 the payroll should still be processed but an alert must be made to the manager for approval.
- The program should use a menu system with three options of:
- Entering and processing an employee’s details.
- The pay slips details with the ability to print.
- Exiting the system.
- The operator need not be computer literate so it should be easy to enter with suitable validation procedures and be as simple as possible. The output should be displayed in an easy to read and user-friendly manner.
- The system shouldn’t be limited by the number of payslip that can be stored or processed.
The company has a logo and wants me to design this and for it to appear on all the screens.
Qualitative objectives
The new system has these key features:
- Simple GUI with no complicated procedure, so setting up the program and easy because everything is preset, it will only be a mater of entering the data. It should not contain complex words that can cause confusion and misunderstanding.
- Easy navigation: possibility to move between sheets with a “NEXT”, “PREVIOUS”, “FIRST PAGE”, “LAST PAGE” buttons.
- Simple layout with all the options on one screen and as much shortcut icons as possible.
- Possibility to select options, rather than having to type them. For example having drop down menus to choose between grades, gender or title.
- Not too many bright colours.
- The company logo present on all screen, including the pay slips.
- Possibility to have large font because one of the user has eye sight problem.
- The system will reject values that surpass a certain limit. For example it will impossible the have £3 or £500,000 as a gross pay.
Quantitative objectives
The new system has these key features:
- Be able to process/store pay slips for at least 30 employees.
- Be able to produce quickly a pay slip for any employee by referring to the employees’ details data base.
- The calculations will be done immediately (gross pay, net pay, deduction of taxes…)
Investigation
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Who is the client?
Owner of the business, Winston Newton.
- How many users are there?
4
- Who are the users?
2 data input clerks, 1 Admin staff and 2 deputy manager.
- What experience do the users have?
The 2 data clerks have basic ICT skills, they have never used a spreadsheet. The rest have advanced ICT skills and have used a range of system applications.
- What are the problems with the current ICT system?
Takes a long time to calculate the payroll system and there are errors that occur within the payroll which delay employees wages.
- How does the current system work?
By manually calculating the details on a form that the employees fill in and is then signed by their manager.
- In what format should the information be in?
A payslip, details of the payslip have been given in the brief.
- How many employees are there?
Around 30.
- What type of interface do you want the payroll system to have?
Simple, user friendly, not too many bright colours.
- How often do your employees take breaks whilst inputting data?
Every hour and a half.
- How long do your employees work for?
Mostly full time, 9 hours a day.
- How would you like the design to look like?
No specific design, easy navigation, menu driven interface so that it’s easier to input data.
- How do you protect data from security breaches?
Serious issue at the moment because everything is paper based and filed, have the information kept computer based.
- Do you train your employees?
They receive mandatory training.
- When do you backup?
Don’t usually have a backup strategy, would be a helpful feature.
- When do you update the payslip?
On a weekly basis.
- What format would you like it to be given in?
Printed.
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What does the company do?
We teach mix martial arts sports such as Kickboxing and Thai Taekwondo
- How old is your business?
11 years.
- Do you make enough turnover?
We make more than enough turnover which is why we need the new ICT system.
- What is the average wage?
£7 an hour.
- Do you follow health and safety? How?
We do and we used a video from youtube to teach our staff to abide by the health and safety code.
- What is the overtime pay?
One and a half times the normal pay.
- How many hours do your employees work?
A minimum of 40 and a maximum of 60.
The interview was used as it allowed me to get active feedback front the client. It’s a more interactive approach that was great to get in depth details about the situation of the company and the requirement. Also I was able to discuss some of the requirement directly as I had concern about the realistic implementation of some of them for either hardware or software limitations.
I also investigated the data input process myself by being physically present at the office.
Impact on organisation
Analysis and deliverable
Statement of scope
I have decided to help by creating a system to incorporate solutions to the issue of organisation, time keeping and booking. The above client requirements are going to be the foundation of the new system and what I must focus on throughout the design and implementation. The system will be implemented to enable Ninja Freestyle Martial Arts Academy to organise class booking more efficiently, deal with cancelation or any kind of update to the client profile in a cleaner way and populate the payroll system with time worked directly from class/booking. With the current system, double booking and clashes are frequent which affect teacher’s and customer’s plans as classes or student must sometimes be moved. Customers that are wrongly booked end up in the wrong class (rank) or different teacher; teacher has sometimes more student than expected.
As mainly paper based in a diary, updates can be fiddly and messy and doesn’t cope well with unforeseen changes.
Ninja Freestyle Martial Arts Academy will be storing customer’s personal data so protected access to the system and regular backup will be essential in order to conform to data protection act.
They aren’t a budget for the new system as it was proposed and not asked and it will have to be implemented on the existed computer ( Pc with windows vista, complete office suite, 1.2 Ghz processor, 2 Gb ram, 150 Gb harddrive etc).
Input-Process-Output-Storage of the new system
Data Flow Diagrams (DFDs)
Level 1 DFD
Systems Flowchart
Booking
ICT skills of the user
Qualitative objectives
The new system has these key features:
- Simple GUI with no complicated procedure, so setting up the program and easy because everything is preset, it will only be a mater of entering the data. It should not contain complex words that can cause confusion and misunderstanding.
- Easy navigation: possibility to move between sheets with a “NEXT”, “PREVIOUS”, “FIRST PAGE”, “LAST PAGE” buttons.
- Simple layout with all the options on one screen and as much shortcut icons as possible.
- Possibility to select options, rather than having to type them. For example having drop down menus to choose between grades, gender or title.
- Not too many bright colours.
- The company logo present on all screen, including the pay slips.
- Possibility to have large font because one of the user has eye sight problem.
- The system will reject values that surpass a certain limit. For example it will impossible the have £3 or £500,000 as a gross pay.
Quantitative objectives
The new system has these key features:
- Be able to process/store pay slips for at least 30 employees.
- Be able to produce quickly a pay slip for any employee by referring to the employees’ details data base.
- The calculations will be done immediately (gross pay, net pay, deduction of taxes…)
Agreed Deliverables
Design and Planning for Implementation
