CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1             BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Billing is the act of issuing bills for goods or services rendered. A bill is a printed or written statement of the money owed for goods or services rendered.

Billing system can be done in two ways, namely manual method and electronic method. In a billing System, where the storage of data is done manually i.e. information is entered into record books. This is inefficient as a number of problems can arise from this:

·        The information has to be access from one point i.e. where the record is kept.

·        In order to get information anywhere, duplicate copies have to be made.

·        Changes made in one record might not be updated in a duplicate.

·        Loss of records to natural disasters.

·        Anybody can access any report and any sensitive data.

·        No report to find out the sales volume, stock list and summary report.

Because of the above reasons listed above it is unreasonable to maintain billing System on record books in this age of computer based information system. The E-billing System is developed to solve these problems.

E-billing is the act of issuing bills (that is a printed or written statement of the money owed for goods and services rendered.) electronically or automatically via computer. E-billing system is a networked database application. A database application is defined literally, as an application that collects data from users through an interface and stores it in a data file (on memory), to process, manipulate and retrieve for decision making.

1.2             STATEMENT OF PROBLEM

The manual method of billing, storage and retrieval of customer’s information and computation could be strenuous and time-consuming. It may involve dedicating a person, people or department of the firm to handle this task. Performance computation on the part of staff could be stressful. The E-billing System focuses on how to ease the problems of retrieval of customers’ data when billing is made.

1.3             OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The aim of this project is to create a computerized bill generation process and invoice, whereby customers’ details will be maintained on a database. It will also help the firm to maintain their product lists, customer lists, and print the invoice. Also it is possible to share the data from multiple systems in a multi-user environment.

The study focuses on the following objectives:

·        To make sure data is not duplicated.

·        To give security to the sensitive data of the firm.

·        To be able to access data from any computer system connected to the database server.

·        To keep records of sales volume, stock list and summary report.

·        Store data as long as possible.

·        To be able to find and print previously saved invoices.

·        Provide easy backup of data which can be used at another location.

·        To curb every error made in a manual or handwritten billing system.

1.4             METHODOLOGY OF THE STUDY

In this project we make use of UML (Unified modeling language) to design the processes of the application and the user interaction with the system.

The System is a Microsoft window based application that runs on the .NET platform. It is developed using Visual Basic .NET. VB.NET is built on the Windows Server System to take major advantage of the OS and which comes with a host of different servers which allows for building, deploying, managing and maintaining Windows Based solutions. The Windows Server System is designed with performance as priority and it provides scalability, reliability.

The advantage of VB.NET includes;

·        Rapid Application Development (RAD) Support.

·        Powerful Windows-based Applications

·        Simplified Deployment

·        Powerful, Flexible, Simplified Data Access

·        Improved Coding

·        Direct Access to the OS Platform

·        Object-Oriented Constructs

·        COM Interoperability

The system uses Microsoft access 2007 as the database server. MS Access is desktop RDMS support small application with all features like relational query, different data types, joins, and query. Its benefits include;

·        Easy to use and easy to deployment.

·        Integration with Windows OS

·        Scalability

·        Import and Export of data in all major database system.

·        Centralized Management

·        Reliability

·        Automating Tasks i.e. no need of manual updating.

1.5             SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RESEARCH

The significance of this study is to use object oriented development processes and techniques in the automation of a billing system. Formal analysis and design were used to give adequate understanding to the object-oriented technique used. The major quest is to ease the problem and stress encountered in billing of customers and keeping records of stock list, customer lists, sales volume, and summary report.

In addition the application is window based making it usable by most systems in this part of the world which makes use of Microsoft windows operating system.

This project will be of benefit to:

You either get what you want or your money back. T&C Apply

Talk to us right now: (+234)906-451-7926 (Call/WhatsApp)

---