Computerized Sales and Inventory

Technology results computerization which has been a common part of our everyday needs in this world.

Rapid advances in technology have helped to meet these demands of society. Computerization has been somehow revolutionized the modern world which ushered what we called the “Information Age”, where knowledge has become accessible and available to everyone. The proponents have witnessed its evolution, and even its enormous benefits. Due to this, its importance can no longer be denied.The modern age of computerization made it plausible on business and corporate organizations to keep up with the demands of their industries. At present, most businesses are equipped with the latest Information Technology Systems that allow them to function fully and effectively in the efficient delivery of their products and services. But still, some small and medium-scale companies still rely mostly on pure human efforts to do some tasks.

Through Sales and Inventory System, the importance of computerization is vastly utilized.A system is a set of detailed methods, procedures, and routines established or formulated to carry out a specific activity, perform a task, or solve a problem. Sales and Inventory System is one of the most important systems on process of any business because it involves the management of products, materials, and equipments which is vital on production management. Inventory is a process of counting products and listing goods and materials available in stock by a business. An inventory of stocks consists of all the physical assets of a business.It is usually performed in order to know the availability of products. A sale is the pinnacle activity involved in the selling of products or services in return for money or other compensation.

It is an act of completion of a commercial activity. The Sales and Inventory System is made necessary in order to keep inventories at their optimum levels to prevent either out-of-stock or overstocking. Inventory transactions include receipts, adjustments, transfer, and issues. This system is made to keep sales transactions organize.It also made to provide accurate and reliable sales reports as well. Currently, the company is performing inventory using a manual system. Macabling Marketing and Construction Supply is located at National Highway, Macabling, Santa Rosa City, Laguna.

The owner is Crisanta B. Labador, who thought of a business that will give good income for the family. The company was founded as a family business which started originally on making hallow blocks only by the year 1970. The business evolved and later on, it offered hardware needs and construction materials as well. At present, the business offers more than two thousand (2,000) different kinds of merchandise such as lumber, paints, electrical, pipes and plumbing. It has five  employees consist of one manager, one  salesclerk, one cashier, one  helper, and one truck driver. The company do not actually have inventory procedures.

The management will just know when to order items to the suppliers if the products were out-of-stock or if the manager thinks that items were in minimum quantity. In their sales transaction, it is composed of the salesclerk responsible for listing customer’s order then will check and verify products if available in the log book or in the warehouse. Along with the items, the salesclerk will then compute for the total amount using a calculator and will pass the list with the counterpart prices along with the customer’s payment to the cashier. The cashier will check and re-compute amount then issue an official receipt given to the customer. In case of large type of items ordered, the salesclerk will give written list of ordered items in advance to the helper to prepare.The company encountered problems such as in monitoring their products due to manual searching in their inventory logbook. Also, it takes time in taking orders and issuing receipt.

Lastly, there are some cases where in employees commit mistakes in sales transaction. Base from the conducted interview, the proponents have decided to embark on project named “Macabling Marketing and Construction Supply Computerized Sales and Inventory System” which can provide a faster transaction in the company and will help solve the company’s problems that concerns vital progress of the company and its employees.

• Statement of the Problem.

• General Problem:

How to design, develop, and implement a Computerized Sales and Inventory System which will improve the current system that will avoid loss of stocks, loss of customers and improve profitability for Macabling Marketing and Construction Supply?

Specific Problems

• How to create a module that will monitor and determine the availability of stocks?

On the company’s current system, the salesclerk will go over the inventory logbook for determining the approximate number of available stocks.When a customer walks in at the store to inquire for an order or purchase an item, the salesclerk will have to check for an item by browsing the logbook and locate items on the warehouse to check product availability which takes much of time. The customer will have to wait until the verification is done. Also, there are times the customer waited but unfortunately his/her orders were unavailable.

•  How to design a module that will control the under-stocking of the products?

The ordering of products will only happen when the salesclerk notices that the quantity of item is out of stock or at in minimum stock level.Under-stock is to have an insufficient quantity of merchandise or supplies. Out-of-stock is where products are not in supply in a warehouse and temporarily unavailable for sale.

Both occur due to the absence of reorder point which will give the signals to the management when to order products and its suggested number of quantity to be ordered.

•  How to design a module that will secure information, maintain data integrity and provide security access level to users?

Information is very vital for every business and securing it would be necessary.In the current system, the sales and inventory is being recorded in the logbook and kept in the table drawer. These logbooks do not have a secure place for keeping not until when surrendered to the owner’s accountant. Because of that, even unauthorized users can access the information written on it.

• How to provide file maintenance with regards to sales and inventory?

The current system has no systematized process of adding, deleting, and editing of product information. Information for a particular item is being recorded again even this item already exists.

The details for product information include product name, product code, product description, product size, supplier name, and unit price. All incoming and outgoing items are only recorded in the logbook.

• How to design a module that will automatically generate reports accurately in an efficient and faster way?

The current system generates any kind of reports. It only uses logbooks and these reports are handwritten only which is time consuming. The generated reports are needed by the management to make decisions regarding company’s operations and to analyze business’ status.The Stock Status Report is being generated by the salesclerk for the manager every time needed for. It takes a day for the salesclerk to finished writing it.

The Sales Report is asked by the manager everyday to check daily sales activity. The cashier is responsible for Sales Report generation which takes a day to accomplish. Also, the manager asks for Monthly and Yearly Sales Report to the cashier for analyzing company’s profitability as well as for internal revenue purposes. These reports are generated which take a day or two to finish.

 Objectives of the Study :

• General Objective

To design, develop, and implement a Computerized Sales and Inventory System which will improve the current system that will avoid loss of stocks, loss of customers and improve profitability for Macabling Marketing and Construction Supply.

• Specific Objectives

To create a module that will monitor and determine the availability of stocks. The proposed system will provide an Item Inquiry Module that will help lessen the time in determining the availability of the stocks.The module will enable the user to have a quick access and automatically views product and its information available on-hand in the warehouse. On using this module, the user will just have to supply for the right product name or product code on the search icon to display and check for the product availability.

In this module, the user can also make stock adjustments and update product information.

•  To create a module that will control the under-stocking of products. Monitoring the critical level or reorder point is very important to prevent out-of-stock and under-stocking of items.The proposed system will have a module that will provide reorder point which will inform the user when to order a particular product with the use of an alert message to minimize under-stock and out-of-stock situation and to prompt the user that an item reaches or nears its critical level.
• To create a module that will secure information, maintain data integrity, and provide security access levels to users. The proposed system will require the user to enter username and password that would limit access to authorized users only.The module would also give access levels to user so that he would be able to access only those modules and files needed to perform each work assignments.

Part of securing the data and information is through backup. The manager can manipulate and access all of the modules such as modules for Inventory, for Product Information, for Sales Transactions, and for Sales Reports. The salesclerk can access modules for Inventory and Product Information only. The cashier can only access module for Sales Transaction.

• To create a file maintenance module with regards to sales and inventory.The proposed system will provide file maintenance process such as adding, editing, deleting, and searching of information of every users such as the administration, manager, salesclerk and cashier; suppliers, and products. This would mean to have an organized recording or records, which will be free from redundancy and with consistency.
• To create a module that will automatically generate reports accurately in an efficient and faster way. The proposed system will provide reports module that will generate reports automatically which is important in the decision-making of the management.The salesclerk will no longer write and check items in the inventory notebook, but rather use the sales and inventory modules in the system and click the report item in the list so that it will be automatically generated and printed so that the manager would have a hardcopy and soft copy of the reports needed.

Significance of the study

The proposed system is most significance to the following:

•  Macabling

Marketing and Construction Supply The proposed system will provide an effective stock monitoring and inventory system for the company, which will be suited to the needs and wants of the company.It can further enhance the functionality of inventory and can therefore help the company attains its goals and sustain its growth. In sales transaction, the checking of the availability of products, the computation of the total amount and the issuance of the official receipt can be done by the proposed system in a short period of time which can give a faster transaction in lesser effort.

• Manager

In the proposed system, the manager will be able to receive sales and inventory reports at the time it is needed and can easily determine the stock status which is very important in decision-making. Customer In the proposed system, the customer can be sure of enhanced and faster customer service. Since the system is computerized, a salesclerk can checkout a customer’s order in a half time required. Work in process move quickly that would reduce the time spent by waiting of customers. Therefore, customer dissatisfaction can be avoided and good business reputation remains.

• Salesclerk

The salesclerk will benefit much from this proposed system. Since, the salesclerk is the personnel involved around sales and inventory transactions.

There will be an easy monitoring and searching of an item on time and a faster way of producing the ordered list to the customer.

• Cashier

In the proposed system, the cashier will not have to use a calculator in the computation of the total amount since the proposed system can already compute. Also, the cashier can benefit from the proposed system by automatically can produce receipt right after computing and can generate reports anytime needed. • Proponents The study can help the proponents in many ways, aside from being a requirement for the subject.The proponents can also benefit from this study which can improve their knowledge and skills in the development of a system. It will give them a way to apply all the knowledge acquired especially in programming. Also, it can help them in recognize problems and work out for proper solutions for these problems.

•  STI College Santa Rosa

The study will serve as a reference to check the knowledge of the proponents and can be used by the school for future needs. This study can be used by the company and therefore, be bringing the name and reputation of the school. Future Researchers The study will be a very useful guide to other people who wish to develop a similar system in the future. Future problems that researchers might encounter will be minimized as well as to be resolved. Future researchers can adopt some ideas about sales and inventory system that can be of use in their studies.

 Scope and Limitation

• File Maintenance

The proposed system will provide file maintenance module, which is capable of adding, searching, editing, and deleting of information about a product, user, and supplier.It can help arrange and sort items accordingly and produce product list. It can able to arrange by category, by brands and by suppliers. It will keep a record of all products that the company sells and its suppliers. The information of products and suppliers can be quickly updated from time to time. Product Information provides the list of information tube maintained in every product the company sells.

It consists of the following:

1. Product_Name – name of the product.
2. Product_Description – type or brand of products.
3. Product_Code – modify the code of the certain products.
4. Size – measurement of a product.
5. Unit_Price – price per unit of the products.
6. Markup_Price – the company’s percentage within the certain product.
7. Selling_Price – the price were the company sold the product to the customer.
8. Supplier_Code – indicate the product to a certain supplier.
9. Supplier

Information provides the list of information about a certain supplier who plays an important role in the company and gives products and supplies needed by the company. It contains the following attributes:

1. Supplier_id – identity of the supplier
2. Supplier_name – name of the supplier
3. Supplier_add – address of the supplier
4. Contact_no – cellular phone or telephone number of the supplier
5. Contact_person – a company’s contact person or a representative
6. Product_supp – list of products given by the supplier User Information provides the list of information of a user who is involved and authorized in the business transaction to be able to access different modules. It consists of the following:
7. User_name – the name that modifies a certain user
8. User_password – combination of any characters memorized by the user Name – first and last name of the user
9. User_add – address of the user
10. User_contact – cellular phone or telephone number of the user
11. User_pos – the title of the position of the user in the company

• Transaction

Inventory In the proposed system, all incoming deliveries of stocks will be added to the inventory and each transaction will be deducted from the inventory. The proposed system will help to improve the company’s current manual procedure. Sales With the proposed system, the cashier can do transactions faster, monitoring of daily sales will be easier and reports can be generated anytime.The amount purchased by a particular customer will be computed by the system.

This will be summarized into the receipt generated by the system that can be printed and kept into the system. Efficiency of the current system will surely improve.

• Generation Stocks Status Report

It will show overall status of stocks in the warehouse. It is being generated by the salesclerk every time the manager asks for it to monitor availability of stocks. Items Master List It is a reference list of all items and their location in the warehouse to facilitate counting.It can be generated by the salesclerk every time the manager needs to go over all of the items, available stocks and its unit price. Re-Order List A report that reflects list of items and it is used to alert the management on the need to purchase an item and which has reached its re-order point.

The salesclerk is the one who can generate it anytime the manager requests for it when it is the time needed to purchase product from the supplier. Back Order List It lists what item and its quantity ordered by the customer but not on-hand in the warehouse at the time ordered.This report can be generated by the salesclerk every time the management wants to track under-stock items and check for product availability. On Order List Quantity of an item ordered from the supplier but not yet received in the warehouse. The salesclerk can generate this report as for the manager’s request to review items which were not yet been delivered and to update suppliers of scheduled delivery. Official Receipt It is the quantity of an item received by the customer. This can be generated by the cashier as a customer’s copy every when a customer has a transaction made and has a product purchased.

• Sales Analysis

Report of Product (Daily, Monthly, and Annual Report) The proposed system will provide sales analysis report as per requested by the management on a daily, monthly, and annual sales basis. The cashier can generate it every day as the manager needs to see status of daily sales activity. The cashier can monthly generate this report as the manager presents it to the owner through sales presentation meeting. Also, this report can be generated by the cashier yearly when it is to be needed by the management for internal revenue purposes. This will help in monitoring the trend of sales of the company. Utilities Back-up This would let the management to have their back-up of all files in database in case anything happens unexpectedly so as to recover all these files. The system will provide a daily back up module for the resource documents in the hardware, thus giving them an assurance that resource document are safe from unexpected, file lost incidents.

• Security

All critical data is protected by passwords. The cashier can generate it every day as the manager needs to see status of daily sales activity. Access to such information is prohibited for unauthorized users.Every user has a password and this password is linked not only to individuals but also to business functions and it can be changed if the user wants to. It limits the number of personnel and authorized personnel who could access, update and modify the records. The system will provide user information that will show the user profile and provide user access, and have two user accounts for employee and administrator before anyone can use the system; the users are required to encode their respective login name and password every time the system is used.This will make the system secured from individual who are not allowed to use the system and see important information.

Login name and password contains information about the user so the management can track the different users of the system.

Limitation

• The proposed system will not include the inventory of equipment, tools, materials, and other office supplies used in day-to-day operation of the company.
• The proposed system will not process credit cards and cheques payments.