CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND TO STUDY
Prompt payment of Staff salaries by Management of and Organization boosts the morale of staffs and enhances productivity. Manual preparation of staff’s salaries is often associated with lots of problems, which often time disrupt the morale of workers. The problem usually ranges from arithmetic errors in computation, delay in payment, underpayment or over payment and so on. In this project work, an automated system will be developed which shall eliminate all the problems associated with the manual process. The most common method of keeping financial records of a company was manually. A bookkeeper kept the journals, the accounts receivable, the accounts payable, payroll and the ledgers in his best possible penmanship. In later Years, an accounting machine, which was capable of performing normal bookkeeping functions such as tabulating in vertical columns, performing arithmetic functions and typing horizontal rows, was used. An example of payroll software is “QUICKBOOKS”. This Software allows the employer to enter the wages into the system after he has manually calculated them. The payroll and Check printing are processed through the system. The Employer has access to payroll reports that he/she can print and use to double check against what he/she entered before printing. This allows the Employer to correct any detectable errors beforehand. Computerized Payroll Systems allow you to process your entire normal payroll task via a computerized system, rather than by hand. Many different Vendors offer Computerized Payroll System. Like different computer programs, they largely offer the same type of features with slightly different interfaces. There is more to Payroll than just handing out cash or checks. However, after gathering data on what the employees did and comparing it to their salaries, some simple payday mathematics will let the employer hand out the money.
1.2 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM
After research and interview had made with the admin of HOUDEGBE NORTH AMERICAN UNIVERSITY, I concluded that a “Mobile Payroll System” should be developed. This is because from the expectation of HOUDEGBE NORTH AMERICAN UNIVERSITY, the admin wants the calculation of the commission and salary become easier in their payroll calculation activity and can produce a complete report. The problems that faced by the admin and staffs of HOUDEGBE NORTH AMERICAN UNIVERSITY is waste a lot of time in computing their payroll. They don’t need to waste a lot of time in calculating their Salaries, Pension, tax and pulling out records of a staff’s finances. The admin wastes a lot of time in calculating one by one manually. The motivation of this project is to let the admin to calculate the target Commission rate easily for each employee. With this project, the admin also can count the total salary of each employee easily and also can produce the salary slip and a whole year report in details. With this, it will save a lot of time and also easy the work of admin in payroll calculation activity.
1.3 OBJECTIVE OF STUDY
· GENERAL OBJECTIVE: The main objective of this Study is to design and develop a database for HOUDEGBE NORTH AMERICAN UNIVERSITY which contains a computerized payroll that deals out fast transactions, minimize manual checking of employees, deductions and generate the essential reports. A computerized Payroll system must be able to keep and generate accurate reports on employee income. An equally important objective of a computerized payroll is to generate Paychecks and Pension Plans.
· SPECIFIC OBJECTIVE: To minimize the manual checking of each Staff. It also develops an avenue that will generate essential reports and monitor status of employee Pension Plan and Charges.
1.4 SCOPE OF STUDY
The study will cover the Entire school Database while focusing on the Payroll aspect but not entirely excluding the School database. The Database contains different aspects including the Entry of Academic and Non Academic Staff details, getting results of students and Fees specific to different departments. It also contains an entry point for different courses and departments. The Payroll aspect deals with the process of getting the Pay plan for each Employee. It monitors the Pension Plan, Tax etc. Extra Parameters can be added to the database based on the requirements of each school but the skeletal structure of any school database has some specific aspects and each of these has been entered for starters.
1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF STUDY
This is the part of the study that discusses about the importance of creating Computerized Payroll system. It provides samples on how to run a Computerized Payroll system. Unlike companies situated in different continents like Europe, Asia, North America etc. where the employees are paid on an hourly basis, here in Benin we stick to the traditional Monthly Payment and this reduces the stress put on Payroll processing. Normally, Payroll processors are required to calculate the Paycheck based on hours worked in respect to pay per hour, deduct Tax and other deductibles, Pension Plan etc. then print out the Paycheck but here, the Payroll processor I created would calculate the Paycheck based on the days present in the month, employee post (Position in Hierarchy), Type of Employee (Academic staff or Non Academic Staff), Tax and Pension Plan. A Computerized Payroll system has direct deposit capability which saves money spent on printing live checks and time/effort put into tallying the Paycheck for each organization. It gives the Employer the opportunity of double checking which is extremely important in spotting errors which could be drastic if not spotted. The system generates reports to ensure compliance with tax and Pension requirements which ensures that the company adheres strictly to the rules placed by the Government of a particular country. This includes monthly, quarterly and annual wage reports and development of employee forms. Really advanced Payroll processors even take the employee vacation days, sick days, paid trips, personal time etc. into consideration to tally the exact amount the staff is to earn at a particular period.
1.6 DEFINITION OF TERMS
· PAYROLL: Payroll is a process by which employer pays employees for the work they have done. Any business with employees should have a payroll established.
· PAYROLL SYSTEM: A payroll system is a software which organizes all the tasks of employee payment and the filing of employee taxes. These tasks can include keeping track of work days, calculating wages, taxes, pensions and paying/printing of checks.
· SQL SERVER: SQL stands for Structured Query language. This Server works hand in and with Visual Studio, as any data entered while the Application is set up and running enters the database created in SQL. It is a database computer language designed for the retrieval and management of data in relational databases.
· VISUAL STUDIO: It uses Visual basic or VB.net which works in hand with ASP.net to create this Payroll system. It is a programming tool used to create or develop windows or GUI (Graphic User Interface) applications.
· SDLC (SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT LIFE CYCLE): The software development life cycle is a framework that describes the activities performed at each stage of a software development project. It starts with system analysis and runs through various stages till implementation and maintenance phase.
· HTML: HYPER TEXT MARKUP LANGUAGE. It is a language used in describing web pages. It works hand in hand with CSS. It is a case sensitive programming language and has various tags used to mark different aspects of the web page
· CSS: CSS means Cascading Style Sheets. It is used to style the HTML page which results to attractive and presentable web pages.
· DDL: Data Definition language. It is used in defining data. Create, Alter and Drop.
· DML: Data Manipulation language. It is a command used in manipulating data. Insert, Update or Delete.
· DCL: Data control language. It is a command given to grant authorization. Grant or Revoke.
· DQL: Data Query language. It is a command given in the database. Select.
· MD5: The full meaning is Message Digest 5. It is used in password hashing. This is part of the security measures the Mobile Payroll processor has.
S.P: This means Stored Procedure. It is a procedure written in query language which the database uses to enter values.