1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
The art trading in materials i.e the process of buying and selling is nearly as old as man himself. Before the advent of money as medium of exchange man bartered item surplus of his requirement for things, which he needed? From the time discovered that he could put his talents to produce or manufacture things, he began to specialize on whatever was his vocation, man found it more economical to purchase materials of quality suitable to his needs at prices which he considered favorable.
It was observed that 50 to 60 percent of eastern shop expenditures is on materials. The purchases department therefore, becomes the biggest spending department of the eastern shop. Materials and supplies form the life blood, as it were of an industrial concern. These should be made available on proper place, time and at proper price. If all these do not happen the right way it may lead to the inefficient marketing techniques or out mode production skill can lead to a decrease of profit as inefficient system of purchase management can lead to a decreases in profit. Professional competence there fore, is important in managing the purchasing function purchasing today is a professional skill. Purchasing involves the activity directed towards securing the materials, supplies, requirement and services required in the operation of an enterprise.
These activities have to be performed with optimum efficiently, economy and effectiveness. These three factors are the key factors in obtaining excellence in managerial performance.
Since materials constitute the largest chuck of the cost of the creation of value (for which alone to customer is willing to pay a price), it is necessary for the purchase to exercise at most prudence in ensuring for the purchaser to exercise at most prudence in ensuring that the best ultimate values is obtained for every ripe spent on material VFM (Value of money) has to be the slogan of the purchase department.
Today purchasing is not the dame as buying of yester years. Buying is money the act of procuring at item of material at a price. On the other hand purchasing function is the improvement of profit and actively searching out and implaning new ideas for improvement of the company’s product achieve this objective by cost of material. Finding out substitute materials that are more economical, by eliminating element of cost in purchasing that do not contribute to value and generally ensuring a higher degree of effectiveness in managerial performance functions righ form participation, working capital management and profit improvement.
In order for the purchasing department to carryout operations accurately, timely, economically and effectively, it needs to process purchasing transactions set up files possibly documents as well as receipts of ordered items set up. Program to monitor the quantities and prices of received items.
Hence the use of computer is very important in purchasing department.
1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
Purchasing department of eastern shop finds it difficult to handle the bulky job manually, especially files as a result of inaccurate and untimely processing of purchasing transactions. The inaccurate and untimely processing may be attributed to postal delays, bad handwriting, loss of vital paper or document, transcription errors, general validation features during processing and plain ignorance of what information is about, all course ion to many of the problems.
1.3 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
The study will show how accuracy is attained in using computerizing purchasing system. It also shows how time is saved when using designed programs.
The purpose of the study is to prove how computer can be used to achieve easy calculation and account processing storage and reference of purchasing policies for decision-making. The computerized purchasing system is more efficient accurate and take less time in processing than manual. The design can be adapted for order big trading companies.
1.4 IMPORTANCE OF THE STUDY
The main goal of using computerized purchasing system is to reduce unit labour requirements of each business operation
To access and maintain the account, determining quickly nd easily what total are in the goods purchased.
To examine the present mode of purchasing information.
To find out the problem associated with present mode.
To design an appropriate and suitable system of controlling purchase for the company.
The new system is thus designed to eradicate the problem of inefficiencies, inaccuracies and wastage in the manual processing or records and updating of purchasing files without human intervention.
1.5 SCOPE OF THE STUDY
This research project wa only restricted to the purchasing department of the eastern shop, Enugu. The following activities has been identified with the department:
1.6 LIMITATION OF THE STUDY
A lot of constraints were encountered during this research. They are time and financial aspects; this could not allow me to carry out the work at the expected level. My inability to get an already written project on this topic was also a constraint towards the study. Also there were some problems of unwillingness of the respondent to give accurate information.
1.7 ASSUMPTIONS
During the process of study I assumed that the workers were computer literate. I also assumed tat they were using purchasing information method was not computerized. There was also this assumption in me, they had not stated implementing computerized purchasing information system.
In a write up like this there are going to be some definitions of terms. The terms considered important to explain because it will make it easy for other people who are not in this filed to understand the basic filed used in this project. They are the following:
COMPUTER An electronic device capable of accepting data as an input and process it to give the information as an output.
PROGRAM A list of instruction that tells the computer what to do.
Data A raw fact that convey little or no meaning.
FILE A collection of related records.
RECORD it is a data structure that contains a number of related filed in a predefined fixed order.
Input data supplied to the computer.
OUTPUT result of processed data.
FLOWCHART this is a diagrammatic representation of the steps required solving a problem.
SYSTEM This is a group of interactive element that forms a unified whole.
STORAGE DEVICE This is a device used for storage
APPLICATION PROGRAM This is a program which process data for a particular function e.g payroll
DIRECTORY A list of the content of a program library or the files contained on a magnetic dish, floppy disk or hard disk.
HARD-COPY A printed record from computer.
HARD WARE All the physical print of computer that are visible to the eye and can be touched.
SOFTWARE These are written programs that enable the computer to work it can also be defined as the component of computer system that one cannot see or touch.
IMPLICATION The stage in system development in which there is putting into practice the design so developed to work in an organization.
INPUT/OUTPUT CONTROL it is a control reconciles input and output to establish accuracy of processing.
PURCHASING This is act of buying of goods and services mainly in quantities.
INFORMATION This is product of data processing. This processing includes retiming, summarize and otherwise manipulate data into useful form for decision-making.
RECORD ACCOUNT It is control total produced by a computer program of a number of records proceed during a given run.
BUSINESS This is a commercial or merchantable activities engaged in as a means of livelihood.
WHOLE –SALE The act of buying and selling of commodities in large quantities usually for re-sale or buy retail.
WAREHOUSE A structure or room usually big where commodities or goods are stored.