BAP71A Accounting Information System

Case Study

Sam Walton and John Walton are two brothers who run their father’s 20-year-old business “Walton Brothers Auto Solutions”. They have two divisions in their business. Sam looks after the workshop, where they service new and used cars. Second division of business is retail of automotive parts, which is looked after by John. Retail shop is located just 20 minutes away from car service workshop. Both sites are located in Sunshine suburb of Melbourne. From last 2-3 years their business has been growing at a very fast pace. Their business continues to use traditional means of reporting and heavily relies on paper based reporting mechanism. However, as business is expanding fast so it is becoming difficult to keep up with the pace of reporting requirements, need of timely information primarily in relation to costing, pricing and sales revenue for their business. Margaret Jones is their bookkeeper; she spends considerable time for just maintaining the books and journalising transactions in a traditional way. Many a times payments to suppliers are delayed and payments from customers are not received by due date. On some occasions customers do not make payment and Walton Brothers do not even chase all overdue payments in a timely manner due to using traditional recording and reporting mechanism. In last couple of years business revenue has grown by more than 80%, which then lead to increase in many expenses and other costs. Walton Brothers are facing cash flow issues and are finding it hard to maintain a reputation of reliable operators. Margaret advised Walton Brothers that they needed to improve their accounting systems and not using computerized accounting software was one of the issues.

REQUIREMENTS

• Explain traditional accounting system for recording accounting transactions. Identify its strengthens and weaknesses
• What are various options that Walton Brothers have if they want to have automation in their Accounting techniques? At present their entire recording and reporting is paper based.
• Conduct an online research and suggest at least two accounting software that they can use. For both software answer the followings:
  • Explain how it will solve current problem
  • Explain strengths and any weaknesses
  • Explain cost to purchase and implement (software and hardware cost both)
  • How is using a Accounting software different from using existing traditional Accounting techniques
• Explain if any other computer based programme can be used to substantiate Accounting software’s. If, yes how can they be more effective then using the Accounting software for daily Accounting processes within an organisation.