Streamlining Accounting Processes for Borger Management

The assignment content discusses a research paper on Markeeda Guest-Spencer, which focuses on implementing a single system that streamlines processes to reduce errors, manpower, and overall cost. The new system aims to provide accurate and timely financial data, reducing the need for consultants and manual conversion of data from multiple software systems. The benefits of this approach include improved maintenance by the IT department, error-free reports, and reduced costs.

Markeeda Guest-Spencer
Research Paper Week 8
July 11, 2016
Professor I emailed you about a late submission. My computer wouldn’t power and I was
out of town on work travel. Turns out the charger shorted out. I arrived back home from the
audit and ordered from Amazon. It arrived today.

Original Proposal
The Property Management Company I worked for a number of years ago used many
different accounting systems that didn’t communicate with one another. The 1 person
accounts payable department used Timberline Software. The 2 person accounts receivable
department (as well as the 40 on-site property managers) used Rentroll Software. The
General Ledger and Financial Statements were maintained on MRI. None of the software
was compatible to the other.
Preparing monthly financial statements for the property owners was a tedious week-
long process. Outside consultants were hired to convert the data from all of the various
software packages so that it could then be imported into MRI. This process resulted in many
errors every month. The monthly expenses for the consultants were massive and continued
to grow. The system errors became more frequent and the 1 person IT departments was
unable to handle the increased system problems. Additionally, due to the multiple systems---
true and accurate financial data was never available until month end.
The challenge of the final system will be to streamline processes with the goal of
saving time and money. Additionally the system would ideally provide more useful and
accurate accounting data/information as well as address the IT department shortcomings.
“TO BE”
As it has been described, Borger Management faces a problem of gathering information
from different platforms and converting them to a single platform to create the financial
statements. So instead of converting the data from varied sources, encountering large
errors, hiring expensive consultants etc., one can rather create a single system which will
have different modules yet in the same format. In other words, the new process will have
different modules like:

1. Accounts payable
2. Accounts receivable
3. General ledger
Data will be stored in different files yet on the same server and using the same software.
This will help in reducing:
a. Errors
b. Manpower
c. Overall cost
d. Result creation time
e. Report creation time
The data will always be available and the users will not have to wait for the end of the month.
The backups can also be taken up and also reports can be created anytime and the data will
be simultaneously updated in all files every day with the increasing amount of data. This is a
viable means for lessening the load on the IT department as well. This is possible because
they will only have to maintain the hardware and software devices rather than handling all
the conversion, merging and generation processes of the accounting system.
FUNCTIONAL AND NON-FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS
The functional requirements of the new system are:
1. Interface requirements
a. There will be screens for adding accounts payable, receivable and preparing
ledger.
b. There will be interface to prepare financial reports.
c. There will be interface to generate required report at any point of time.
d. There will be options to print data, edit data and even delete with permissions.

2. Business Requirements
a. The data will backed up on the server regularly to avoid any errors
b. The personnel will be trained to use the new system
c. There will be permissions to access the data at any point of time.
d. The data files will be compatible with all the modules that is will use same
format always.
3. Regulatory/Compliance Requirements
a. There will audits on the data to avoid and errors or frauds
b. The system and server access will be via authorization
c. Digital signatures will be used to transfer data over the web
d. Servers will be regularly maintained and upgraded to avoid any threat or
vulnerability.
4. Security Requirements
a. The general users of the system will only be able to add the information or
edit it.
b. The users will have to seek admin permissions to delete the data.
c. There will be firewalls to protect the server data.
d. There will be server managers t audit and manage the server data there by
avoiding any threats and attacks.
e. The server room will have highest security to avoid and theft and damage.
f. There will user logs to keep check on addition and editing of the data.
The non-functional requirements of the new process are:
a. Reliability
b. Manageability
c. Error free

d. Better response time
e. Better data handling
f. Security
g. Readability
h. Scalability
i. Better utilization of the resources
j. Reduced man hours
HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE
The hardware requirements of the system are:
a. Memory: 100 GB
b. RAM: 4GB to process the reports from different modules
c. 2 GHz processor
d. Processor: 64-bit
e. The server to hold the database
f. Printers
g. Other Hardware such as monitors
The software requirements of the system are:
a. DBMS system to handle the data and store it.
b. Firewall to protect the systems
c. Anti-virus software to protect the user systems
d. The new software to handle the processes and generate the reports.
ACTIVITY DIAGRAM
The activity diagram of the new process is as follows:

BENEFITS OF THE NEW PROCESS

The benefits of the new system are:
a. No data conversion from different software files.
b. Better maintenance of the system by IT department
c. Error free reports
d. Random reports at any time
e. Reduction of the overall cost. For example:
It takes 7 days to prepare reports working 10 hours a day i.e., 70 hours. So if we have a simple
and combined software, it will reduce the work to 2 days i.e. 20 hours. Thus this will also reduce
the cost. Hence all three time, man hours and money will be saved.
f. The business quality will also improve.
g. The maintenance of the data via a common system will be a lot easier.
h. And the IT department will have lesser burden and the systems will be managed efficiently.
i. Frauds will be prevented.
j. There will be higher amount of security of the data.
k. There will be administrators and managers.