Designing a Single System for Financial Statements

The assignment content discusses the design of a software system to improve financial statement creation by consolidating information from different platforms into a single platform, reducing errors, manpower, and overall cost. The new process includes modules for accounts payable, receivable, general ledger, and data backup. Functional requirements include interfaces for adding, editing, and deleting data, as well as generating reports. Non-functional requirements include reliability, manageability, error-free operation, and security.

software system design
SOLUTION
JULY 18, 2016
STUDENT

Contents
THE FUTURE PROCESS.................................................................................................................2
FUNCTIONAL AND NON-FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS.......................................................2
HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE.......................................................................................................4
ACTIVITY DIAGRAM.........................................................................................................................5
BENEFITS OF THE NEW PROCESS.............................................................................................5

THE FUTURE PROCESS
As it has been described that the company faces a problem to gather information from
different platforms and convert them to a single platform to create the financial statements.
So instead of converting the data from varied sources, handling large errors, hiring large
manpower 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
And 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.
In this way there will be lesser load on the IT department as well. This is so 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 no-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.