I buy the videos from various warehouses from east London, which are stored in my stores the videos go directly to my customers who have booked them in advance. If any videos are not rented out within a certain time limit we refund them. If the delivery is huge we have to use transport companies to deliver the goods, but if the deliveries are small or reasonable we use our own van, which is operated by one of the store workers.  How do you record your finances, what is involved and ho long does it take?

Once the goods are rented out we keep invoices, which are then filed. At the end of each month I personally add up the bills and calculate the sales, decrease/increase in stock levels, profit/loss, monthly expenses and VAT. This process takes up the whole day as the sums are lengthy and take up a lot of time. At the end of the year income tax is calculated referring to the profit or loss made throughout the twelve months.  How useful will this new computer-based system be to your company?

The computer system has enabled my company to keep track of the latest stock levels, sales, staff expenses, etc. This meant my company can solve any problems (like if our expenses start spiralling out of control) immediately we can adjust the way in which we run our company, with a computer based system I will have better control over my company and its finances. What advantages and disadvantages do you think the computer system has? The computer is accurate and will save me a lot of time but I am worried about the cost of a PC and software needed to run my finances, also if anything happens to the computer all my finances will be destroyed. What has the new system able to do?

The new system is be able to explain to the user the amount of videos staff has sold and at what quantity, also their expenses should was shown so that the profit/loss can be worked out. The information was to be displayed in an organised way so that it is user friendly and the user can access the data easily. For this the information needs to be shown in some sort of order, i.e. it needs to be shown in rows and columns. The system must be able to save the information so that progress can be tracked and any changes made.

– How has the new system perform? The new system performed accurately, as it performed important calculations. If there were any mistakes then the overall profit/loss became incorrect but was changeable. It also has to perform quickly, when any of the data is changed, automatically all relevant data should change. From this statement I can say that I have solved the initially problem because the new system I have created has benefited the owner. I have shown the owner that the previous manual method he was using was not as accurate as a computer system. Also he has saved a lot of space in his store and was bale to make the store look nicer and attractive.

Other people opinions: Person 1: He thought that my spreadsheets were sufficient for the type of business I was running. He like the way in which it was set out and how I used the correct information to create payslips. However he thought that I would need a bigger database if I were to expand on my business and that I would need an on going maintenance. He thought that it was very simple to use and therefore didn’t take long to input information and see the result.

Person 2: He thought that my spreadsheet was very easy to use and was not as complicated as he initially thought. He liked the way it was set out because it wasn’t confusing. He added that he would have like to see more information about the employees i.e. their age. One thing he didn’t like about my spreadsheet was the payslips I created because it had unnecessary information like net pay and gross pay. Finally he added that my spreadsheet was very good for the business I was running because it wasn’t too big or too small.

On going maintenance: To keep an on going maintenance I will have to update my data at certain intervals like once a week. I will also update my information every time I sack or hire an employee. This is because I might get staffs names mixed up and give a payslip to someone how is no longer working for me or I could not give an employee a payslip because they are not on my spreadsheet.

My opinions: This project in my opinion has been a very successful one. I met the user’s need, which was my original and main target, and these needs were met with a sufficient amount of detail. For the time allocated, I was satisfied with the way my spreadsheet was set up and indeed I used a variety of formulas and functions that were all relative to the work. These functions allowed me to set the spreadsheet to calculate data automatically in most cases, which is one of the main things I believed a user would need. I think that I could have made my spreadsheet better by making it more detailed in certain aspects such as the length of time I set the spreadsheet over. This could only have been achieved if I had had more time to work on the project however, so it would have been too hard to include a great amount of detail in such a short space of time. I could also have included a wider range of items on sale as the amount I had were really for a smaller type store who would more often than not leave the transfer of data on to a spreadsheet due to there not being enough data to permit doing so.

Doing my spreadsheet over a year rather than a month would have given the user a much better idea of how their business is doing. Only doing a month restricts their knowledge of the store and a yearly record would enhance this view and allow them to make future decisions under better judgement.