Executive summary
Any sales system required to be used in any sales department or organization needs to meet user specification requirements. It has to be user friendly and an interactive user interface. These are some of the main requirements that any sales system software ought to meet. Redundancy in the system should also be reduced to avoid repetition and bulkiness. These new system should have an auto update in information that are linked together or that bear same data. In essence, the information in one section of the system should not differ from the other sections that are expected to be alike.
Introduction
The main provisions that the system will require to have in essence are many. It’s main and core activity is for transaction purposes, doing calculations, recording of the transactions and even generation of the reports that will be required. During the system design and building it should be checked for flaws to curb on eventualities and wrong transactions which eventually give inaccurate records and information. The system should also be user friendly and also should have an attractive and an interactive user interface. It should be easy to use. Consequently, it should reduce on complexities during its usage. It should also provide for an easy upgrade and easy maintenance features.
The principal documentation on the new sales system is mainly on functionality of the system. The areas of focus include, the main functions and activities that the system is expected to perform, how it will be build, the design, who to build it and its shortcomings and how to deal with them. The system in should able to handle all business transactions, it should be built by qualified IT specialists, and all the transactions and processes should be linked thoroughly by the new sales system. Since this is a computer based system, encryption would be ideal to cub instances of unauthorized log in and also for protection of transaction data.
Winford New Sales System
The new system installed Winford Services plc (Winford) should be able to handle several processes that will be undertaken in the contract. These processes include: Sales, purchases, production, finances and report generation too. In the sales process, the system should handle all sales activities from the most primitive – those dealing with very small amounts to the advanced – those dealing with large amounts of capital and also large transactions. A system should be put in place to record the sale of the tickets, specifying what kind of tickets they are either discounted or not and if discounted is it for over 60 years or under 18 years of age. The system should capture all these records correctly for accuracy (Richard 2009).
It should also be able to record transactions pertaining vending machine sales that include sale of snacks and drinks. Specification of the products by system will be important for inventory purposes and also for stock taking. Sales revenue from the pool should also be allocated a place in the system to allow capture of all transactions and the total revenue collected. The system should be able to eventually generate an overall amount of revenue collected on each day. Additionally, it should indicate specific areas of collection.
Fig 1 above shows how sales transactions will be handled by the system
The new sales system to be put in place should be able to handle other transactions like the payroll. This is important as it serves to economize on the number of systems to be used. It should allow recording of employee names, their details including their employee numbers, and their remunerations. This function of the system can be protected using an authentication of users for example passwords. It should record salary payments and able to generate pay slips for the employees and also keeping it in records (Gordon 2009). After every month, the system should generate the overall enumerations detailed list of the employees and the totals.
The purchase process should allow for recording of procured materials for ticket making, printing, snacks and drinks purchased for resale or raw materials for their production. The system should be able to capture their costs and in finally it should calculate and give the totals of all purchases clearly specifying the costs of each. Production process should also be incorporated into the system to be put in place. The number of tickets produced and their pricing should be captured by the system. The system should also distinguish the discounted and non-discounted tickets and also distinguish the discounted tickets according to the age factor (Gordon 2009).
Records are important for any business venture and for contractual purposes too. Records in business contract provide for the basis of revenue sharing and also avoid disagreements. The records that should be captured include sales records, customer listings and production records. Sales records in the system should bear the characteristic of specifying the types of tickets bought by different customers recorded also according to discounting factors and the overall cost of the tickets sold (Andrew 2000).
Customer listings record should in the new system and they entail daily number of customers and the activity participation of each one of them. Production records too should have a provision in the system giving records of tickets produced and the snack and drink production records. Purchase records in the system should be allocated. The purchases of raw materials records, and ticket printing records equipment should be generated by the system.
All processes and activities that transactions are involved should be recorded and captured by the new system. The new system should be able to generate a report and a record showing all the revenue collected also bearing the percentage in which each sector contributed towards the revenue. This is important since it will help to identify profitable sectors and non-profitable ones enhancing decision making (Andrew 2000). It will help in deciding whether to continue the venture or not and also the review of efforts to be employed to realize the goals.
Fig 2 above shows how all the transactions and activities are linked to the new sales system.
The Risks that the new system faces and the Solutions regarding the risks
There exist several risks that are associated with any sales system. Winford Services plc new system faces several risks that need to be addressed to reduce the cases of a loss. These risks include errors fraud and thefts. Fraud on systems may arise from the system users. This is from people with proper knowledge of the system and can alter some functions or even values to achieve their desires (Andrew 2000).
Just like computer crimes the users can manipulate the system without detection and fraud the business. In order to curb the menace, there should be a regular audit conducted on the system to detect flaws and repair them. An authentication during log in can also address the problem barring unauthorized persons from accessing the system (Andrew 2000). It is possible to encrypt the sales system to increase difficulty in cracking the system passwords and its source codes too.
Theft is also a principle risk to the new sales system. Entry of sales is required for any transaction undertaken. Employees or system users can fail to enter information of sales into the system therefore they will not appear in the record sales (Andrew 2000). This could lead to theft of money from unrecorded transactions. In order to deal with such a situation, it is necessary to crosscheck on the record sales against the stocks available.
The Winford Services plc (Winford) can also install automated snack vending machines that can be interconnected with the new sales system to reduce chances of failing to capture transactions. The automated snack selling machines only release the products after they have been paid for. By interconnecting the new sales machine with the automated snack selling machines, all transactions will be captured (Henning 2012).
System errors are a principal risk to the new sales system. System errors could cause loss of revenue or function failure too. Errors in coding can fail the system. Before implementation of the new system, it should be tested carefully to ensure that it works perfectly. The functions required to be handled by the system should be carefully checked and tested to ensure no coding errors. Feeding inaccurate values into the new system during coding can arise in loses or over valuing therefore oppressing the customers. The system has to be cross examined to eliminate such errors (Charles and Martin 2012).
The new system faces a risk of complete system failure. It could be caused by virus attacks, or improper coding. The new system should be secure enough against virus attacks. It should be installed with business or corporate anti viruses that can handle, detect, delete and protect the system against malware. Some viruses act as spy wares and even can transfer money paid in credit cards to separate accounts which can lead tofraud(Henning 2012). The remedy for this is anti-viruses and firewall installations to the system.
System failures can be as a result of coding errors it can be rectified through various ways of implementation (Charles and Martin 2012). Piloting is ideal rather than a complete implementation that could totally fail the organization. Piloting is implementation of some parts of the sales system to check on its effectiveness and accuracy and moving to the next if the previous stage is effective until the entire system is implemented.
The activities External Auditors will perform with respect to internal controls of the new sales system
External auditors have the responsibility to undertake with regard to the internal controls of the new system. Internal controls pertains recording, authorization, completion valuation and recording of transactions in the correct accounting periods. In regard to recording, external auditors have the responsibility to ensure that there was proper recording of transactions. This is done by comparison of records against invoices and other materials like receipts. Proper recording ensure information credibility and that calculations and obligations of the business of paying taxes is paid correctly (Andrew 2000).
Checking on proper authorization is another responsibility. This involves checking of signatures to ensure that transactions going on were done through proper channels. External auditors ensure that only authorized persons give a go ahead to transactions and payments so as to avoid losses through fraudsters. They should also ensure that all the transactions and records are complete. Records should be complete showing their beginning to ends in the financial years or accounting years (Michael 2001). This is done by checking the numbering orders, checking sales orders against dispatch notes and also checking sales orders against sale invoices.
Transactions are also cross checked by the external auditors to determine their validity. They would use business permits to ascertain the allowance to carry out the business transactions. It also shows that the means of earning the returns is valid and accepted by the law. Proper valuation is the other responsibility for external auditors. It checks the values entered in the transaction records against actual values provided in supporting documents. Proper classification of the transactions is also cross checked and ensuring that the transactions were recorded in the correct accounting period (Henning 2012).
Substantive testing of sale aims to verify the completeness accuracy and validity of financial statement transactions and the balances. The external auditors check on the accuracy of the calculation of the Value Added Tax. External auditors check the validity of the totals presented to ascertain whether they were obtained in a valid way. It also checks on whether the totals were from transactions that were valid (Belke, 2006).
Completeness is checked through trying to find unrecorded transactions. Accuracy is checked through checking totals of invoices against recorded totals. It can also be ascertained through checking whether all the totals have been correctly added.
Conclusion
It is important to note that all the specified requirements ought be met and implemented. It is vital since any malfunctions and errors in the new system could cause the entire business to cripple. Information security too is important to protect customers’ details from leaking and also for future referencing by the business. If the system is to work as expected by the management, it is necessary during its design and coding that the users of the system be present to give their requirements and satisfaction of the new system design and functionality. It would be important for the business enterprise to conduct a user training of the new system to ensure that all the employees using the system are well conversant about it to minimize the delays and errors in its usage.
References
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