Financial Accounting

Financial accounting or ‘book-keeping’ is the process of recording financial transactions from the day-to-day operation of a business. The sale of goods to a customer and the subsequent settlement of the debt are two examples of financial transactions.

Sales Accounting

When credit sales are made to customers, a record needs to be kept of amounts owing and paid. Payment is normally requested with an invoice. An invoice usually gives details of goods supplied, quantities, prices and VAT. Credit sales are usually made on weekly a basis, which means that the customer has to pay within that period to obtain the discounts, if any offered. Overdue payments need to be chased, so sales accounting systems normally produce reports analysing the indebtedness of different customers. Debt control is vital to business profitability and computerised systems can produce prompt and up-to-date reports as a by-product of the main application.

Human Resources

The human resources (personnel) function is responsible for the selection (usually by interview), recruitment, training and development of staff. Personnel records on employees will store all the information needed by Salaries and Wages to make the correct payments to employees; this will include details of, for example, gross salary, tax code, statutory sick pay and holiday entitlement. Depending on the size of the organisation, information may also be held concerning: qualifications, courses attended; and career development plans.

Design

The design function is present where an organisation develops its own products and services; a trader who simply buys and sells goods has no need of a design team unless designing logo’s etc which maybe carried out by another firm. Design is part of the research and development (R&D) function, which is vital to organisations wishing to radically develop their product range. The nature of design teams depends on the product or service being designed. The skills and talents of a car design team are clearly very different from those of a team designing a cover ...

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Design

Production

Markets for a business’s products should ideally, drive the production function. In other words, it should be geared to produce the necessary mix and quantities of products required by customers. If goods are perishable within a short time, and large reserve stocks cannot be held, then production should be flexible and responsive to the day-to-day sales requirements. Of course, this is an ideal and production plans cannot always be changed at short notice; ships and other large items take months or years to build.

The production department must know exactly what is required and when; it must also have the staff with the necessary skills and any machinery must have the appropriate facilities and production capacity.

Marketing

A marketing function is a vital part of many large national and international businesses; it aims to generate information, from a wide range of data sources, to support marketing decisions. Three such decision areas are:

Strategic and relating to, for example, expansion of the company’s existing market share and the identification of new marketable products;
Tactical, for example, planning the marketing mix;
Operational, for example, day-to-day of sales calls and ad hoc promotions.

At the operational level, data gathered from sales invoices, sales force staff and accounting information could be used to establish customer types. This means customers can be classed as ‘low’, ‘medium’ or ‘high’ volume users according to the frequency and volume of their orders. This helps sales staff target a particular category of customer and to plan the timing of sales calls.

Some businesses use radio and TV to market and advertise their product, some even allow the readio to develop their advertisement, this is hope Magic 1170 go about making jingles etc for adverts. Two systems are used to sample and mix music and voice although the preferred system is called SADIE. This is basically a four track recorder with mixing capabilities which is very easy for the operators to use by simply dragging and overlapping wave files.

Distribution

Distribution concerns the delivery of a company’s products to its customers and is very important. An organisation can have the best products available and the most effective market campaigns, but if it cannot distribute its goods efficiently it will fail. Distribution systems include the management and control of a company’s own delivery vehicles and drivers. Systems should also be in place to record delayed deliveries and customer complaints, order tracking (buyers can check the progress of their product) and the return of unwanted or damaged goods.

Controlling the costs of distribution, which can be considerable, is of major importance. For example, the breakdown of distribution costs across manufacturing industry is typically as follows: administration 17%; transport 29%; handling 8%; packaging 12%; warehouse 17%; stock control 17%.

Administration

Administration systems provide support and services across the organisation. They include, for example, the handling of telephone switchboard and fax and photocopying services, document production, room booking (for meetings etc), requisitioning of equipment and consumables, and general secretarial support. ICT services are a part of that administration support service.

ICT Services

Apart from small firms, most organisations need specialist staff to develop, introduce, maintain and update the various systems that make use of information technology. The responsibilities of ICT Services are much broader than those traditional held by wholly centralised computer services or data processing departments because communication is a larger part of IT with the introduction of the internet and E-mail amongst other things.. The development of cheaper and more powerful microcomputer systems has resulted in computer facilities being distributed more widely. For this reason, ICT Services needs to provide a much more flexible service and support user systems at the point of use. For example, uses of network workstations need support when equipment, such as a shared printer, breaks down or they may require help in the use of software on the network. This contrasts with a centralised department, which holds all the computer equipment, carries out all computer processing and restricts user access to specialised applications, run through dedicated terminals. ICT Services may be known variously as Computer Services, Management Information Services or less commonly now, the Data Processing Department.