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• Project Overview
• Project Team
• Introduction - Deliverable B
• Data Structure
• Database
• Data Flow Diagram
• Data Dictionary
• CRUD Analysis
• User Interface

PROJECT OVERVIEW

The Finance department at Mid-Co is the operational sponsor of this project. The examination of the internal processes used to reimburse the travel and entertainment expenses, highlighted several problems. It prompted the Finance Department to make a request for development of a new automated system.

The current system of paying for travel and entertainment expense details comprised of an ad-hoc mix of Bank Drafts, Direct Charges to the company, Cash Advances, and several company-issued American Express charges. Expense reports are required by the finance department for all expenses paid by the above methods. In cases of Direct Charges and the American Express cards, Mid-CO's finance department directly pays the bills.

The problems that were uncovered during the examination were numerous:

• Employees frequently charged expenses, but did not fill in expense reports in a timely manner. 
• The finance department found that a significant amount of their time was consumed in paying the various vendors vendors involved.
• It was discovered that a number of charges were made on company accounts, (and paid for by the Finance department), which should not have been considered legitimate employee expenses.

As a result of the above mentioned problems with the current system, the upper management has chosen to implement a new policy. This will end all outstanding company accounts, and issue each eligible employee a VISA card. As employees travel with the company, they will charge their expenses to their corporate VISA card. When the employees incur expenses, they will be required to turn in an expense report from which they will be reimbursed. Under this policy, when the bill is sent to the employee, the employee will be responsible for paying the bill.
 
 

Functional & Non Functional Requirements 

Purposes the application will serve:

• Support on-line user entry of expense reports
• Support on-line review and approval of expense reimbursements
• Support electronic notification to end users of expense report approval and reimbursement.
• Facilitate management reporting over expenses

Business Goals for the Application:

• Process and deposit all expense refunds received at least two days prior to direct deposit cutoff day.
• Reduce the amount of time it takes to correct incorrect expense report data by 75% 
• Reduce staff expense processing time by 8 hours per month from 2 days to 1 day.
• Eliminate 12 hour per month job of entering time sheets.
• Increase the dollar volume of expenses billed to customers.
• Bill all expenses charged to a customer within 30 days of incurring the expense.

Information Systems Requirements:

• Must run on existing PC NT workstation and NT server local networking environment. (No remote or WAN access)
• Should use MS-Access on the NT workstation as the project database
• Should use existing HP LaserJet printers on the NT network.
• Can require use of both a mouse and keyboard
• We will use MS-Access as the programming tool.

Policies Pertaining to the System:

• Only Finance Department can add or make changes in database.
• The users shall need a unique Password along with their Employee ID to log into the system.
• Employees  should only be able to expense reports.
• Only specified users can have access to maintenance and approval functions.

Type of Information the system will provide: 

• The system will generate a report in a pre-defined format for Department Manager's review.
• The system will generate a Payment Report for Finance Department that will contain information about the expense reimbursement.
• The system will provide analysis reports by date, category, department, and person for management
• The system will feed the direct deposit system with the appropriate information.

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PROJECT TEAM

• Kashif Karimi
• Yury Minin
• Natalya Ostrovskaya
• Kumud Singh

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INTRODUCTION - DELIVERABLE B

The first deliverable was an introduction to the project. It outlined the project objectives, and the macro level view of the system's functionality. It also outlined the project plan.

This deliverable outlays the  systems design for Mid-CO's expense processing system. It is divided into three:

Part One of this deliverable defines the data structures for the system. The database is represented by Entity relationship diagram (ERD) and database schema. ERD is the logical representation, whereas database schema is the technical implementation of the logical model. Data dictionary defines the scope and qualification for each of the attribute in the database table. We have also attached a copy of database in MS-Access format.

Part Two of this deliverable is regarding the system internals. The process flow is represented by Data Flow Diagram.  We have used CRUD Analysis in order to make sure process models balance with Data Structure. 

Part Three covers the main user interface screens. The screens attached in this deliverable are made in html format. We will be using MS-Access as the programming tool. The screens shown here would be developed and implemented in MS-Access. We plan to start developing the expense system in MS-Access  from Monday 05/24/99.

As you browse through the following pages, you will note that the views get successively more detailed. The first model is a "Context Model" which is a "satellite view" of the system. Further models describe atomic processes and aim to show detail at the "15,000 foot" level. 
 
 

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DATA STRUCTURE

Data structure contains an Entity-Relationship Diagram (ERD) and a Database Schema. ERD depicts entities about which the company wants to store data. Database schema represents the technical implementation of the entities shown in the ERD.

Entity Relationship Diagram

Database Schema
 
 

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DATABASE TABLE

Database tables have been created in MS Access. The properties for each of the attribute in tables have been defined based on the definitions in  Data Base Schema. 

The following picture shows the relationship between each of the entities. The relationship line shows the foreign keys in the tables, which is the basis for relationship between two tables. 

Download the database expense.mdb
 
 

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DATA FLOW DIAGRAM

Data Flow diagrams model all the processes & flow of data throughout the system representing logical requirements, which are technology independent hence making it easy for the analyst to communicate the new system to the users. 

During our analysis and design process, we decomposed the process flows into three levels.

The first level is the context diagram (Level 0)  that shows the satellite view of the system. It shows the interaction of external entities / agents with the system.

The next level (Level 1) of data flow depicts all the processes performing required tasks with respective data stores and data flows.

The next level is the functional decomposition of all the processes in the level 1. We have five functional decomposition models, one for each of the main process in level 1. They are:

Functional Decomposition - Process 1

Functional Decomposition - Process 2

Functional Decomposition - Process 3

Functional Decomposition - Process 4

Functional Decomposition - Process 5

Note:  The functional decomposition diagram also shows the processes and data stores that are external to that process. We are using COOL GEN for data flow diagrams, and it does not allow us to create data flows that are  not linked to any other process, data store, or external agent.

Functionality of the proposed solution for MID Co expense system included an online submission of the expense form by the employee that can be retrieved by the department manager to validate the expense details submitted by the employee. The finance department will be responsible to manage the expense information submitted by the employee, and to deposit the amount to be reimbursed in the employee's bank account. The system will also generate a report for the executive management, based on the criteria defined by the user group. Each user group will be assigned a unique user id and password to login in to the system. The system will also generate a report for direct deposits on a pre-defined time interval. The Finance department will make arrangements to request the transfer of funds from the company's bank account to employee's account.

The following five processes perform all the above tasks:

1. Get Employee Information
2. Process Expense
3. Validate Expense
4. Process Payment
5. Reporting

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DATA DICTIONARY

This document contains the data dictionary for Entity Relationship Diagram and Data Flow Diagrams. The ERD dictionary defines the scope and qualification of each of the attributes. The second dictionary defines the Data Flows in the process model.
 
 
 
 

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CRUD ANALYSIS
 
 

• R - Read
• C- Create
• U - Update
• D - Delete

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USER INTERFACE

The screens have been created in html format for the purpose of this deliverable. We will be using MS-Access as the programming tool, and the screens will be developed in it. The screens developed for this deliverable serves as a prototype. The coding for the Expense Processing System will be started from May 24th.
 

Start Screen Show
 
 
 
 
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