The Accounting Software Package in Westside Christian College
The accounting software can be referred to as the application that stores and processes transactions associated with accounting. In addition to that, the accounting transactions reside within a functional module such as accounts receivable, payroll, accounts payable, trial balance and general ledger (Gogus & Ozer, 2014). The accounting software in the industries is considered as the accounting information system.
The study for describing the accounting software has used the Sage MicrOpay is using by Westside Christian College. The description of Westside Christian College along with the use of Sage MicrOpay has been discussed within the study.
Current Organisational Structure:
Figure 1: The Organizational Structure of Westside Christian College
(Source: Here, 2017)
Operational Issues Rising Because of Structure:
The operational issues that Westside Christian College is suffering from because of the organisational structure are as following.
Delay in Admission: As the amount of administrative and employees in the admission and receptionist department are low, it takes a lot of time to admit the student. With this handful amount of employee, it is difficult to improve the business process (Soin & Collier, 2013).
Inflexible Education System: The education system in the Westside Christian College is becoming less flexible day by day because of this organisational structure. The college cannot modify its education processes and methods because of the gaps existing in the structure (Wang & Hsu, 2013).
Gaps in Decision Making: The structure of the institution is de-motivating the decision making process. The head of the school, D. Miller, have all the information regarding the processes occurring in the institution but other administrators do not have this authority (Baker & Filbeck, 2014). As all the processes are interrelated, the administrators have to gather information from other departments, and incomplete information creates gaps in decision-making procedure.
Delay in Student Query Resolve: The instituting is having issues in resolving the student queries. The students submit their queries to the receptionist or teachers (Rahman & Yazid, 2015). These staffs have to inform the administrators to resolve it. This process takes a lot of time and results in student dissatisfaction.
System Acquisition Method:
Investigation and review are the initial process of system acquisition process. The institution first investigates the business requirements. After the investigation is complete, the management of the organisation will review on particular accounting software vendor and services (Ahamed, Rao & Ganesh, 2016).
Determining the vendor and service is the next phase of the acquisition process. Among the various vendors like MYOB, Xero and many others, the institution selected Sage. Institution chose to implement an ERP that will be holding the Sage MicrOpay (Sage AU, 2017). The selection process went through various checking mechanism like whether the software will be able to resolve or make the process efficient and if the vendor organisation, Sage, is capable of providing service whenever required.
Organisational Structure Issues in Westside Christian College
The next phase is verification. Within this phase, the management of Westside Christian College has provided several acceptance criteria. Based on those acceptance criteria, it will determine that the software is capable of assuring and providing security requirements (Selmene et al., 2016). One acceptance criteria are that the software will not provide information of higher employees to the lower employees.
In the next phase, the review and evaluation are done. Westside Christian College provided the Sage with the contractual agreement that consists of service, security and operations assurance. Both the vendor and client organisation has agreed to the terms and condition indicated within the requirement (Mazur, 2016).
System Flowchart of Sales Procedures:
Control Issues in the System and Possible Frauds:
The lack of information available to the administrators of the Westside Christian College has created issues in the administrative control. This issue has created the possibility of accessing the administrative account for granting several permissions unauthorised way. The issues in the information system control are also present in the system. There is a possibility that intruders can exploit thus issue for creating administrative frauds and leave no trace (Stair & Reynolds, 2013).
Another control issue is the input control issue. The accounting software often is not able to assign a specific Transaction Code to every transaction. In general, when a transaction occurs in the system, the accounting software assigns a TC or transaction code to that transaction for various security issues. Without this truncation code, the system may lack in providing high quality authorization. This issue is somehow interrelated with the Check Digit control (Choi et al., 2013). The check digit is utilised the accounting software for checking several significant numbers such as customer number. However, the TC control issue is forcing the system to create an error in Check Digit control method. This way the accounting software is losing its capacity of checking the correctness of the data. This leads to the possibility of financial fraud. The internal executives if understood this issue properly can exploit it for stealing from the institution, and due to an error in the system, the real reason may not be ever identified.
Development and Adoption of the Accounting Software Packages:
Westside Christian College’s management executive and the project manager has created a plan for developing the accounting software package. The Sage MicrOpay will be integrated into the ERP of the institution. The manager created a set of activities that leads to accounting software integration. After the management accepts the plan, the implementation phase is being initiated. In this phase, the software package will be customised for making it compatible with the ERP system (Sherman et al., 2014). The development team starts coding for making the ERP flexible enough to support Sage MicrOpay. The testing team tests the integrated accounting software several times. The testing team is consisting of different members than development team. If everything goes right until now, then the project manager initiates the deployment phase. The project manager and the development team deploy the system and accounting software into the environment of the institution (Friedman et al., 2013).
Process of Selecting and Implementing Accounting Software
After the development of the software is completed, then the adoption phase initiates. The project manager along with some of the project team member creates a training module so that the existing staff can easily operate the system (Choi et al., 2013). This training module is shared with the employees after the management of Westside Christian College approves it.
Current Market Size:
In Australia, the education industry has seen significant improvement in the last five years. The students are coming from various regions of the whole world. In this situation, Westside Christian College has a great opportunity for promoting itself. The competitors like CSU, TAFE NSW Riverina Institute, Western Sydney Institute and much more has a far better position in the market (Connor, 2013). Most of the international students apply for taking admission in these big colleges. Instruction and preparing foundations are intensely moved in the eastern seaboard states, with New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland representing a little more than 75% of Division projects. A hefty portion of these training suppliers is situated close vast metropolitan regions. On the other hand, Western Australia and South Australia have a littler share of division projects than their share of the population (Harmon, 2015). Tasmania and the Northern Territory are additionally underrepresented in the Education and Training Division in light of their populace offers. The introduction to the demand-driven systems has created a great opportunity for the tertiary education. The population distribution where Westside Christian College is situated is high. With a high potential market in the local region, the institution may be able to get a hold into the market.
Market Leaders and Their Competitive Advantage:
Western Sydney Institute: The biggest competitive advantage of this institute is its student capacity. This institute holds a tremendous amount of student in its campus and uses the students as promotion (Venigalla et al., 2015).
TAFE NSW Riverina Institute: The location of the institute is the biggest competitive advantage. The institute also depends on the IT systems, implemented within its environment, for carrying out tasks like promotion, education and management (Holt, 2013).
Current Gaps or Challenges in Accounting Software/Package:
Security: The biggest gap in the Accounting Software Package is the security. The main challenge for the institution is carrying out sensitive activities while providing security to the sensitive data.
Maintenance: As the software is loaded into the ERP, it is difficult for the maintenance team to resolve the continuous, occurring issues in the ASP or accounting software packages.
Authorization: The institution’s administrators are also dealing a hard time in managing the authorization.
Challenges of Accounting Software Packages
Conclusion
From the above study, it can be concluded that the Accounting Software Package, Sage MicrOpay, Westside Christian College is using is crucial. The accounting software package handles most of the accounting related activities of the organisation. The accuracy in the accounting processes has been increased due to the integration of the software into the ERP. The current business process of Westside Christian College needs several changes so that the system can be utilised to full potential. The change of business process lead to various internal issues, but the positive outcome can be worth taking the risk.
Security: Security is a crucial factor in every organisation regarding their information. The accounting software must be able to prevent hacking, so that organisation’s finance related data is not revealed to unauthorised people.
Reliability: The accounting software must be reliable enough so that no issues regarding the financial operation occurs in the organisation.
Reference List:
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