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The Flower Box

Point of sale system

1)     Abstract

This project is regarding the point of sale system. This project explores about new ideas and functionalities during the completion of the system. It is a great opportunity to improve the different level of programming ability, planning, scheduling, testing skills and analyzing the project. And this also helps to understand the deep concept about VB.Net, MySQL.

This is an offline application which helps the owner and the cashier to record the details about the customers, employers and the products/plants. MySQL is used to create the database to store data which is known as “backend”, while VB.Net is utilized front end of the system.

This project mainly consists of two modules. The first module is the admin and the second module is the cashier.  The admin module explores about the recordings of the customers, products and employers. Furthermore, this module has the ability to back up the system and weekly profit report.  The cashier module contains about the invoice of the product and the rental products.

Contents

1) Abstract

2) Acknowledgment

3) Introduction

3. A) Current system of the project (Problem Statement)

3. B) Drawbacks of the existing system

3.C) The Proposed System

3. C.1) Benefits of proposed system

3. D) Aims, objectives, scope & architecture

3. D.1) Aims

3. D.2) Project Scope

4) System Analysis

4. A) Fact finding methods

4. B)  Analysis specification

4. C) Requirement Specification

4. D) Functional Requirements

4. E) Non-functional requirements

3. F) High level architecture

3. G) Risk analysis

5) System design

5. A) Approach & Development Methodology

5. A. 1) Benefits of agile development

5. B) Data model

5.C) Structural Model

5. C.1) Initial class diagram

5. C. 2) In-details class Diagram

5. D) Behavioral model

5. D.1) Use case diagram

5. D.2) Activity Diagram

5. D. 3) Sequence Diagram

5. E) Graphical user interface designs

6) Testing

6. A) Test plan

6. B) Black Box Testing

6. C) White box Testing

2)     Acknowledgment

I would like to convey my appreciation to all those who support me in order to complete this project with encouragement, suggestions and with proper guidance. I give this special gratitude to final year project supervisor Mrs. Samantha Gamage, Miss Himali Wickramasinghe for the support and guidance for the project and Mr. Trevin Motha,   the encouragement throughout this completion of project.

Furthermore I like to thank all teachers and friends who supported and motivate towards the project. Without their help and guidance all the efforts could have been short sighted. Also, I would like to thank my parents, friends and for being with me motivating me to do this quality report. I would like to thank every single person who at least helps me with a word to make this report a success.

3)     Introduction

         3. A) Current system of the project (Problem Statement)

According to the situation of the business, the owner faces difficulties with the current system as Mrs. Dias (Owner) follows a manual system to update the records of the products and weekly profit. The owner hired one employed as a cashier and Mrs. Dias (Owner) didn’t include any details about the employer to the manual system as it’s a small scale of business. Within the time, the owner is struggling to manage the manual system as the profit increased and she had to hire another few employees too. Considering these reasons, the owner decided to maintain the record of profits, products (Plants), detailed record of employers, detailed record of customers who are renting the plants and print the receipt or the bill on a point of sale system.

This business consists of two types of purchasing methods as in selling and renting. Selling based on day today customers and renting based on hotels and restaurants.

The new system which is proposed has the potential of storing data about the detailed record of products/plants, employers, customers. Also, it provides report of weekly profits, seasonal items, and rental items and print the bill/receipt for the customer.

3. B) Drawbacks of the existing system

• Time Consuming & inconvenient

A major drawback in the current system is time consuming. As proof all the records must be composed in the register book as further reference which is inconvenient. Goods cannot be purchased simultaneously as the current system cannot perform parallel transactions as there is only one payment terminal at the store. During peak hours, the customers have to wait in queue for a quite long time to process their payment. It has come to the attention of the founder and employees that they are discontented and uncomfortable during peak hours as they feel packed in the small area.

• Locale Limitations

As it’s a small scale business and due the lack of branches of the flower box floral, the business can only reach a limited number of customers in the local areas.

• Lack of Backups

Since the bills provided by the founder, Proper backups are not been maintained such as reports   and transactions. This can lead to financial breakdowns of the company.

• Lack of proper database management

The current system has manual system for the transaction, every transactions are stored in accounts book.

• Human made errors and data duplication:

Since all the transactions are written in book it may cause errors such as accidental repeating records or incorrect dates of the transactions or incorrect calculation errors.

3.C) The Proposed System

In order to reduce the burden of such problems mentioned above, an offline system is created to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the system. This will gradually lead to lessen problems the customers face while shopping in the Flowerbox Floral and make them to be attracted and have more interest to visit the shop again. Hence, it also reduces time consumption and inconvenience making the shopping system more efficient.  How the above mentioned proposed system can be generated as mentioned below.

3. C.1) Benefits of proposed system

• Convenience & Easiness

Once the customer or buyer selects his or her species of plant, the cashier will provide a bill or receipt with all the information including the date, price, time and number of items of the same species selected about the plant. At the same time, the system database will show  how many plants of the selected item has been sold out and how many are still available in the Floral shop that makes it convenient for the cashier or the founder to sum up the last account records . As a major advantage, an information card is given to the buyer in relation to the rules and regulations of how to care and maintain the plant according to its species unlike other floral shops.

• Generate reports

Owner can view and generate list for the seasonal items and annual report for profits and losses every week automatically.

• Comprise maintenance Information card

An information card is given comprising of all the details such as the optimum temperature, life span recommended shelter by the plant, water and sunlight consumption, whether the plant can be kept as an indoor or outdoor plant and many more useful information is provided by the user friendly Flowerbox Floral shop regarding the plant. This can be followed by the buyer in order to maintain a healthy plant.

• Keep a record on the customers buying habit

Keeping a record of customers buying the products must be recorded carefully. As a privilege for the customers a discount card can be permanently given and whenever they buy the product a discount can be given. Hence, this card will be given for customers who purchases plants of more than 2500/= this will attract the customers and make them more satisfied to buy more plants as they are sure to be given a discount for whatever the species of plant that are bought after the purchased card. This can be done in order to improve more customer visits to the floral shop and also to keep an ongoing rapport and at the same time to build up intense long-lasting relationship.

• Competence

Setting up this manual system can cost very low, resulting in a high profit since there are no other online advertisements available. To have a good start for the business with less employees and training them in a way to know the manual billing system and most of all to satisfy customers’ needs is the main target rather than taking many employees and expanding the business in a minute which can result in loss of business.

• Boost Brand Awareness

According to the new proposed system, new customers will want to try our goods as individual care is given to each and every species of orchid family they are willing to buy. This can increase the sales, increasing awareness in the market and also helping the business.

• Decrease in Costs
• Advertising and Marketing Cost

The small scale business does not have to spend money on business on advertising and marketing as social media traffic, which is the best way to increase sales can be expected rather than spending huge amount of money on advertising and marketing as mentioned above.

• Offer Huge Information

Training a handful of employees well, giving them the knowledge of each and every species of plant available in the store, can lead the customers to be more satisfied with the product that he/she is going to purchase according to their needs. Rather than machines providing answers to the customers doubts they become more content and carefree with which product they have to buy when an employee talking to them face to face providing a favorable reply to their doubts.

• Scalability

With this solution, the organization can grow and scale easily to meet the customer requirements as well the market demand.

3. D) Aims, objectives, scope & architecture

3. D.1) Aims

The aim of the proposed system is to create a manual offline system as this is not an expanded business.

In the near future, it is expected to open more branches around the world where customers can always visit and meet their desires. Unlike an online system, the customer can have a careful look and observe the product they are going to purchase, rather than purchasing the goods looking at an advertisement or a website which will not be the true image displayed.  Species that are displayed online can never be thought to be the perfect plant the customer desires and there will be no exchange or a receipt purchased and therefore they will not be able to return the product if they are not satisfied. Hence it will be complicated for the customer to send his or her feedback regarding the plant as online systems may take few days to reply for their feedbacks.

The small scale business can be financially benefitted as there is no money spent for advertisements. Unlike online systems, there will not be any sort of breakdown in the system where the customers will be irritated if the systems are not functioning well. There can also be a doubt if the online system is being updated daily regarding the plants sold and also the plants currently available at the store.

3. D.2) Project Scope

The main target of this project is to fulfill the customers desires and needs according to what they wish for and making it more realistic in today’s world. For customers those are clueless about the different types of orchids will have a thorough background information from the employees as they are well trained for different types of species. More attention is given to customers to show the hidden truth about the orchid family and making them more concern in how to bring up their plants. The customers have the ability to contact us, whatever the situation is.  To train the few employees under the founder is very crucial. This won’t be a complicated task as there are only a handful of employees. Rather than having a huge staff, its more realistic to have few staff members and give them more them knowledge about the specific field and to pay them a favorable salary.

The technologies used for the development of this e-Commerce are as follows:-

• VB.Net is an Object Oriented   programming language is used create applications.
• MySQL is used to connect with the database and it is an open source database.

4)     System Analysis

System analysis defines as a procedure of collecting actual data to identify the problems, process of the system and to enhance the system. This involves feasibility study as in economical, technical, and social in order to maintain disclosure with the client to complete the system and its functions properly.

4. A) Fact finding methods

Fact finding is gathering information about the existing and proposed system. That helps to identify the requirements which business needs and flows of the existing system. Interviews, observations and questionnaires are fact finding methods.

Interview

Meeting can take as a discussion between two individuals with a specific end goal to gather appropriate data to the system. Interview helps to create quality system by answering questions in regards to the system, business and the requirements. There are five sorts of meetings. 1. Personal interview, telephone interview, focus group interview, depth interview, projective technique.

Questionnaire

Questionnaire defines as predefined questions which used to collect information from the employees. Questionnaires includes open question questionnaires (which is help to produce unexpected results as in original and valuable), multiple choice questions (these type of questions have set of answers for the question.), Dichotomous Questions (these type of questions contain only 2 options), Scaling Questions (these questions refers as ranking questions)

Observation

Observation consider as certainty discovering strategy which recognize data through perception, hearing, touch and so on. This discovers important data to the system.

4. B)  Analysis specification

Analysis specification is understanding the requirements of the customer and the system in a specification document. The necessities which are distinguished arranged into two segments functional and non-functional requirements. Functional requirement defines as what the system should do according to the user where as non- functional requirement defines as behavior of the system according to the certain functions.

MoSCoW approach is organizing requirements and objectives of a framework. This strategy separated into four classifications. M stands for “Must have”, S stands for “Should have”, C stands for “Could have”, W stands for “Wont have”.

4. C) Requirement Specification

1. Admin Dashboard
   1. admin login
   2. admin logout
   3.  add product
   4.  Update product
   5. Delete product
   6. Search product
   7.  View seasonal product
   8. View weekly report
   9.  Back up the database
   10. register employee
   11. view employee details
   12. delete employee details
   13. update employee details
   14. register customer
   15. view customer details
   16. delete customer details
   17. update customer details

2. cashier

2.1 cashier login

2.2 cashier logout

2.3 view product

2.4 search product

2.6 register employee

2.7 view employee details

2.8 delete employee details

2.9 update employee details

2.10 register customer

2.11 view customer details

2.12 delete customer details

2.13 update customer details

2.14 view rent items

2.15 generate an invoice

4. D) Functional Requirements