DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF COMPUTERIZED ELECTRICITY BILLING SYSTEM
ABSTRACT
The project-computerized system for electricity billing is a software package designed to elevate the existing techniques used by the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) to bill its numerous customers. However, the package has the objective of increasing the speed and accuracy of the billing process. It starts with an introduction of a bill and a review of some related power Holding Company of Nigeria activities that will actually result in bill production. This is followed by the analysis and design of the proposed new system. A database file management structure is then used to implement this software design. The implementation, therefore, covers all aspects of billing which includes the computation of customers’ bills and printing duplicate copies of these bills becomes essential for official purposes. Finally, the newly designed system is documented as a guideline for easy operations by the user.
CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
The Power Holding Company of Nigeria is a government establishment that generates and supplies electric energy to the public. Beneficiaries of this electric energy are deemed to pay electric charges allotted to them as bills.
Nowadays, there has been an inspiring desire by Nigerian industrialists, individuals, and the business sector as a whole to enjoy a steady and more reliable means of consuming electric energy. This of course, expands the existing electric energy network in which area electricity plays a great role.
As a result of this expansion, the task of billing the numerous customers becomes very difficult to handle by manual techniques as this hinders good profit margins by the establishment. Hence, there arises the need to write a computer application software system for PHCN which would become a remedy to the existing difficulties and even the impending ones. The Power Holding Company of Nigeria is basically divided into three major departments.
These are: Commercial, Data Processing district; each of which is vested with different responsibilities. Thus, the production of bill is the sole contribution of these three departments.
1.1 BILLING SYSTEM
A bill is a statement of account or indebtedness for goods delivered or services rendered. This definition implies that billing system is laid down patterns or systems for calculating all operations involved in the billing procedures. This course could either be a manual or an automated approach.
However, for PHCN, the billing system will comprise all operations leading to the payment of bills by customers and the preparation of reports for the company’s management. This billing system is said to be the various ways in which data are input, processed and output, in order to produce bills for customers
This billing system in not only adopted in PHCN establishment but also in many other organizations such as Nigeria Telecommunication Limited (NITEL), Waste Disposal Services, Water Cooperation etc, which are also termed essential servicing companies. The topic here is chosen as a result of the importance of the system of billing in the development of the country in terms of good services.
1.2 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
This project is aimed at ensuring prompt and accurate preparation of bills for customers. It is designed to ease the job of an accountant in terms of ledger keeping as all paid bills, debts, and balances and stored and subsequently relayed to management in monthly reports. In general, the system will speed up the billing process and will also help operators in terms with which it can be used. On the other hand, the project will be suitable as a software billing system for any electricity company similar to PHCN. It is for the purpose of this write-up that I have been specific by using PHCN as a case study. This, therefore, implies that if slight changes in the company’s name and few things in the program are made, the system would then be ideal for any electricity billing company in Nigeria to bi its customers.
1.3 METHODOLOGY
The methods of personal interview and record inspection were employed
1.4 SCOPE/LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY
This project is a research work on Power Holding Company of Nigeria. It is concerned with how the customers perceive problems and prospects of using a computerized billing system. Due to limited time, money and resources, it became a major barrier to develop a larger package than this. All data used in designing this new improved computerized system of billing which were collected for this research work are therefore correct.
Thus, it will help to eradicate the problems facing the existing system of billing. The project solves the problems of updating the existing records in the master files with that of the transaction file to produce a new master file for the next process. This eliminates the persistent existing difficulties encountered on the cause of adjusting customer’s bill when accessions call for it. It also produces a billing report for management decisions in a particular month running.
1.5 GLOSSARY OF TERMS I ABBREVIATIONS
DATA: This is a raw, unprocessed tact coded in a form suitable for computer processing.
FLOWCHARTS: These are pictorial representations of information it form of diagrams, describing the sequence of data handling operations performed internally with a computer system.
FIELD: A part of a record reserved for a particular data item.
RECORD: This is a collection of related fields.
FILE: A collection of related record.
DATABASE: A collection of related files
FILE MANAGEMENT: This has to do with all the activities relating to the creation, updating and use of file.
TARIFF: These are codes used to determine the rate with which to calculate consumption.
PROCEDURE: A step by step guidelines for performing certain task.
PHCN: Power Holding Company of Nigeria
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