COMPUTERIZED PAYROLL SYSTEM USING ANDROID TECHNOLOGY

DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A COMPUTERIZED PAYROLL SYSTEM USING ANDROID TECHNOLOGY USING ANDROID TECHNOLOGY

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1      BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

A payroll is a company''s list or records of its employees, which is often used to refer to the total amount of money that a company pays to its employees. 

A payroll system is software which organizes and arranges all the tasks of employee payment and the filing of employee taxes (Wikipedia). These tasks may include keeping tracking of hours, calculating wages, withholding taxes and deductions, printing and delivering checks and paying employment taxes to the government. Payroll software plays several roles for the user, the employees and the company, such as: giving you supper easy ways to manage employee calendar (e.g, sick leave, absences and overtime), gives you latest tax updates you when by notifying you when the updates arrive, allows you to quickly and easily generate payslips for all your employees, serves as a reminder. Payroll also makes deductions from employees’ wages for taxes, wage garnishment, health and life insurance, spending accounts and retirement investments. Payroll works with your accounting department to ensure that wage deductions and other payroll expenses are paid and properly reported.

1.2. Statement of Problem

Manual systems of payroll always put pressure on people to be correct in all aspect of their work.  With manual systems the level of service is dependent on individuals and this puts a requirement on management to run training continuously for staff to keep them motivated and to ensure they are following the correct procedures.  It can be all too easy to accidentally switch details and end up with inconsistency in data entry or in hand written orders.  This has the effect of not just causing problems with customer service but also making information unable be used for reporting or finding trends with data discovery.  Reporting and checking that data is also a problem and can be time consuming and expensive.  

Other problems caused by the manual payroll system are:

Ø Inconsistency in data entry, room for errors, miskeying information.

Ø Large ongoing staff training cost.

Ø System is dependent on good individuals.

Ø Reduction in sharing information and customer services.

Ø Time consuming and costly to produce reports.

Ø Lack of security of data.

Ø Duplication of data entry.

1.3. Objective of Study

The objectives of this study is to design a computerized payroll system using android technology for an organization,

Ø To design a computerized system for calculating basic salary and allowance of staff.

Ø To design a computerized payment platform.

Ø To design a system that accurately stores employee data and retrieves payment history when needed.

Ø To design a computerized system for tracking vacation time, maternity and paternity leave.

1.4. Significance of the study

The study will aid in reducing errors, fraud, increase speed and also aid growth in organizations if successfully implemented. Manual payroll systems in organizations will be totally eliminated with this computerized system in place. The study will also serve as a guide to other student researchers who may want to conduct further research on the subject matter. Findings and recommendations from this system will aid in developing newer versions to serve optimally.

1.5. SCOPE/LIMITATION OF THE STUDY

The scope of this study is centered on the design and implementation of a computerized payroll system using android technology using android technology.

LIMITATION

Financial constraint- Insufficient fund tends to obstruct the efficiency of the researcher in sourcing for the relevant materials, literature or information and in the process of data collection (internet, questionnaire and interview).

Time constraint- The researcher will at the same time engage in this study with other academic work. This consequently will cut down on the time devoted for the research work.

1.6. DEFINITION OF TERMS

A payroll: is a company''s list or records of its employees, which is often used to refer to the total amount of money that a company pays to its employees. 

A payroll system: is software which organizes and arranges all the tasks of employee payment and the filing of employee taxes.

Payslips: a note given to an employee when they have been paid, detailing the amount of pay given and the tax and insurance deducted.

Employer: a person or organization that employs people.

Employee: a person employed for wages or salary, especially at nonexecutive level.

W-4 tax form: is a form completed by an employee to indicate his or her tax situation (exemptions, status, etc.) to the employer. The W-4 form tells the employer the correct amount of tax to withhold from an employee''s paycheck.

CHAPTER THREE

SYSTEM ANALYSIS AND DESIGN

3.1 Introduction

According to Simon Bennett et al (2002), system analysis is defined as a process of seeking to understand the organization, investigating its requirements and modeling then. System analysis can also be referred to as the study of a business problem domain to recommend improvements and specify the business refreshment for the solution. (Jeffrey .L Whitten et al 2001) it is the result of this analysis activity that gives the specifics join of what the proposed system will do based on the requirements. System analysis is the study of a system and its component as a prerequisite to system design.

It is a problem solving technique that decomposes a system into its component pieces for the purpose of studying have well those components work and interact together to accomplish their purpose. Contemporarily, system analysis is a term that collectively describes the early phases of system development. There are many approaches to system analysis and these include structured analysis, information engineering, discovery prototyping, and object oriented analysis for the purpose of this project, the object oriented analysis will be used for the system analysis and design. System analysis is a very important aspect of system development because during the phase several fundamental decisions are made. During the analysis the system owner and user are specified because the system analysis is driven by to business concerns of the system owners and user, system analysis also reveals what the system would do and it helps the stockholder know whether the proposed system is technically, economically and operationally feasible.

3.2 Review of the Existing System

Processes to compute the payroll in most of the our schools like Houdegbe North American University is done manually. Records and payment details about each employed is kept in a personal emolument card and payment salary voucher, which are stored in files and eventually in a file cabinet. The harmonized public service salary structured used to determine the amount to be paid to employees, level and step. The net pay for each employee is gotten after subtracting the total deductions from the gross earnings.

Manual payroll system maintain data in a filling cabin et about each individual employee, payroll darks then use data in this file to calculate gross pay and to determine to amount of deductions. They also record in this file cumulative earnings information for individual employees. Non computerized system use a journal called payroll register, in which a payroll dark records the calculation for gross pay, deductions and net pay. In the manual system, personnel department screens applicant, authorizes the employees, initial pay rate, and creates the manual employment record and then sends a copy to the payroll departments. For salaried employees, this record authorizes a periodic pay check.

 There are seven departments in Houdegbe North American University

1. Education Committee

2. Admin / personnel

3. Financial store

4. Audit

5. UBE (universal basic education)

6. Quality assurance

7. Planning / reach and statistics submit here is computer / ICT section.

Other units are under this education security’s office in the LGEA in dudes,

*Information’s and

* protocols.

All processes to compute the payroll to pay employees salaries in all these departments are done manually in Houdegbe North American University.

 The personnel department completes a series of activities prior to and at the beginning of employment and forwards the information to the finance department. Before the new employment begins work, certain personnel record must be completed. Generally the record from the basic for deductions that will be made from the employee’s gross pay, For a nearly employed staff of appointment stating the grade level and step is given to the new employee and a copy will be submitted in the personnel department, after which the letter to the finance department well send a copy of the appointment letter to the finance department. The accountant will minute on the appointment letter to the officer in charge of salaries to open a personnel emolument record for the new employee. The personnel emolument record shows the name, address, the grade level and step of the employee, the incremental data and the salary details (gross pay, deduction and net pay) every month for each employee for to year. It is from the personnel emolument record that salary devils will be entered into the payment salary voucher. The payment salary voucher contains. Total of salaries paid to all employees in all departments in the University administration, it is also from the payment salary voucher that payment slips and checks are written out. The payment slip and check are dispatched to very staffs after they are written out. It is after they have are gotten their payment slip and checks that they can go to the bank to collect their salaries collect by hand in a table payment.

For existing staff, the process still remain the same as for a newly employed staff except that while the old staff, he / she will go to the administration Authority with the following document:

Last pay certificate

Release letter

Record services

All the mentioned above document will be submitted to the head of department chief personnel officers of the personnel department and process continues the same way as for the newly employed staff. For a retire, a letter is from the permanent secretary of University to the education secretary of the who minute on it and sends it to the head of personnel department. The head of personnel department then sends it to the University accountant, who sends it to the officer in charge of from that data. All this processing involved in paying salaries are done manually and all record is stored in files which are eventually stored in a file cabinet. All these manual processes have resulted in problems such as:

1.       Missing record,

2.       Error

3.       Theft and fraudulent practices

4.       Lack of adequate information and

5.       Wastage of materials.

In the words of amrita chuasiriporn (2009) as your organization grows, the demands on your operations ensure you hire human resources and pay them salaries based on their responsibilities and deliverables. Salaries may be fixed or based on performance or a combination of both. Additionally you need to conform to various lab our laws that ensure employees benefits.

As the number of variables grows each time you are processing salaries, the chances of errors creeping in increase. You need to keep a track of all your employee details, their attention, overtime performance linked in contrives, leaves, and expense rein basements as well as various deduction mandated by labour  and income tax laws such as PF, ES1, PT and income tax deduction.

Your salary calculation showed by efficient enough to provision for any investments that your employees make and which entitle them to various tax exemptions provided by the government.

The entire process becomes extremely, cumbersome and any error has serious implications no the ms of interest and penalties for delayed statutory compliance as well low employee morale.

3.3 Description of Proposed Computerized System

Details from the personal emolument card and payment salary voucher will be used to create database in the computerized system to keep the records and payment details of all employee in all departments in the university, computation of each employee’s earning will be based on the provisions made on the harmonized public service salary structure. In their system, these access options will be provided where you either login as a staff salary officer or payroll administrator. For the staff, one will only be able to view report / pay cheque. As a salary officer, one will be able to compute net pay, view and print reports and pay cheques but won’t be able to pay employees records. The payroll administrator will be the only one who has the access right to edits records, basic salaries and specify percentages that will be used to compute payments. Staffs, salary officers and payroll Administrator at the login interface will have to enter their user name and password in text fields as have contained in the database. If username and password are valid for respective users as contained in the database, the system incomes then and table them to the menu interface as related to individual users. For the staffs, the system takes them to the menu where they will be able to view reports and pay cheque while for the salary officer; the system opens the menu interface where all payroll processes are- contained. In the payroll module, the salary officer after entering key details about the employee, the program will automatically call other payments from the database and display the net pay for the pay period. The payroll administrator will be granted access to the database where record can be modified, edited and updated. The output that will be generated from the proposed system will be the pay cheque, staff report and management report needed at different levels. The computerization of the existing system will help to address problems such as missing records, theft and fraudulent practices arithmetic errors, wastage of materials, lack of adequate information, etc in the system.

3.4 System Design

System design is the specification or contraction of a technical, computer, based solution for the business requirement. Identified in a system analysis (Jeffry L. Written et al; 2001) system design is concerned with establishing how to delivers functionality that was specified in analysis while at the same time, meeting non-functional requirements that they sometimes conflict each other. System design is focused on making high- level decisions concerning the over all attractive of the system

It also involves establishing protocols and standards for the design are divided into stages:

1.       Logical (implementation independent): this is concerned with those aspects of the system that can be designed without knowledge of the implementation platform.

2.       Physical (implementation dependent): this is concerned with those aspects of the system that are dependent on the implementation platform that will be used to model the oriented analysis and design, unified modeling language will be use to model the system. A model is act of drawing one or more graphed representations of a system. While modeling is the process of abstracting and organizing significant features of part of the real word.

The following UMLdiagrams will be used to model the system.

1.       User case diagram.

2.       Activity diagram.

3.       Sequence diagram.

4.       Class diagram

5.       Application lifecycle – android