Financial Management System for School Department.

Financial Management System for School Department

Background

Chatham Grammar School For Boys is a school located in Medway, North Kent. The school has approximately 1000 students and 100 teaching and non-teaching staff. They’re also several groups, which come from the community to use the schools facilities. The children’s university is also one example where some fifty students use the school’s ICT Facilities.

In the ICT department, the staff consists of 2 full time teachers, 1 part time teacher, a network manager and a technician. The department receives two separate budgets. One budget is allocated for stationary and supplies of around £2000, which is allocated from the school. The other budget is allocated for the purchasing of hardware and software for the schools networks, which is around £20,000 - 30,000. This is allocated by the LEA.

Each department within the school manages their own budget and are responsible for ensuring these funds are allocated accordingly. The current system consists of an order form created using Excel, but that is as far as the use of ICT goes. The order forms are printed of twice, one to be sent to the selected supplier and the other to be kept as a copy (the copy will have “COPY” written across it to make sure it is not sent by mistake). One of the most used resources within the school is paper. The paper is ordered in large batches of 50 packs and about 10 packs are used per week. The delivery takes a week for all packs and is kept in a store cupboard. At the moment there are no checks on who takes paper from the cupboard and the technician is responsible for reordering when he decides there are too few boxes. The paper is taken from the stationary budget as well as other items such as the printing ink and toner, exercise books, textbooks and lined paper.

The old system was all paper based, which involved order forms being filled out, sent and filed. When an order has been created, it would be copied; one to be given to the Head of Department for verification, one to be sent to the Head teacher and one to the financial officer would receive the original order form. The head teacher is given a copy so he can see what's going in and out of the school, just to keep an overall idea of what’s happening. The financial officer is given the completed order form to check the department’s ...

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Problem

The school needs a financial management system that can handle and keep order of all the allocated budgets in each department. The financial budgets will have to be divided to cover all supplies such as:

Printing (Paper, Ink, Toner)
Exercise books, Textbooks
Paper (lined, plain, sugar, coloured)
Computer software, Hardware

I am going to create a system that will manage the budget for the ICT departments. This mainly includes the purchasing of supplies such as exercise books and computing software/hardware. In order to achieve this I will need to create a system where order forms can be opened and then filled in. Some box in the order forms will be able to check other data such as stock level or current budget so that the user will be alerted to the budget after he has created the order. It will also be able to keep a list of running companies that may be used for future reference and may accelerate order time.

The inputs to the system will be such data as addresses and names, which will all be entered into the system and may need to be stored for later reference. They will also be organised in type and format, to aid when selecting specific data. Where as the outputs will be based around the order forms. So this will encounter what has been ordered, who ordered it, how much for, and other information to do with the transaction. The inputs will be:

Suppliers Name
Suppliers Address
Suppliers Contact Numbers (telephone, fax, E-mail)
Item Name
Item description
Item Cost
Item Amount
Date of Order
Order Number
Payment Type

Processes will involve the calculations from the order form such as the total price of the order. The processes will be calculated within the system so any alerts can be raised when the order form has been filled in. the processes are all the “do” things that happen when the order has been created.

List - Suppliers, Items, Payment type
Edit
Copy
Check
Confirmation

End User Specification

The data capture method will be chosen because of its advantages such as speed, accuracy and cost. Error can be quite a common problem with this such as bored, under motivated workers miss spelling or incorrectly copying data. The data could be misread due to unclear handwriting. The old system was all manual and so these errors may occur more often than wanted. So to eliminate most of these problems the data would be batch into amounts (e.g. 50 documents). Then each batch could be individually checked for such things as important data inputs and amount of documents, to check none are missing. The batches could also be validated such as field checks and file look up check for validation. This could also include automated computer checks on specific fields, such as a customer id or product type. This is why a new system would be in order, as it will automate the work making it more reliable and easier to process.

Where as in the data processing or transactions it will show every event that has occurred when goods or services have been bought, sold, distributed or dealt with in one way or another. The two kinds are batch systems, where transactions are collected over an amount of time (day, week) and are then processed together.

Also there is an on-line system where data is processed as soon as it is made available. At the moment it is all done manually on paper, with order forms, which is a batch system as it can be done whenever. But with the system either of the two methods can be used, depending on the user.

The output at the moment is a order form on single sheets of paper, which even though is very simple, can lead to problems such as lost, damaged or lack of copies. So by created this system it will enable an automated order form where copies are easily got, possibilities for the backing up of work. And easily retrievable if a copy is lost. The order form can be changed at any time and created from any designs and specifications to suit the user. So overall it will make it easier for the user.

The user interface will be simplistic allowing the user to access any part of the system that they require but so only appropriate users of the system can enter. It will contain a username drop box so the appropriate username can be chosen quick and easy, and then the password can be entered at the logon screen. There will also be a help button and an exit button.

The navigation around the system will just be command buttons and hyper links to keep it simple and so it will keep the whole system alike. The command buttons will allow a single click to get to their desired page and hyperlinks will do the same. They will be able to navigate through pages of the system, and maybe also to relevant web pages if needed.

The security of the system will be quite thorough so there are different levels of access, as it will have to be safe from the opening page so only the correct users can get in the system. The pages will also be locked so the system wont be edited or used in a malicious way.