JORDAN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE

A CONSTITUENT COLLEGE OF ST. AUGUSTINE UNIVERSITY IN TANZANIA

FACULTY OF ARTS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES

DEPARTMENT OF INFORMATION SCIENCE

DIPLOMA IN COMPUTING AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

DOCUMENT TITLE: PROJECT PROPASAL.

PROJECT TITLE: SALES AND INVENTORY MANAGEMENT

SYSTEM.

SUPERVISOR: MR. NULLO.

PRESENTED BY: ELIUD AMBILIKILE.

COURSE: DIPLOMA IN COMPUTING AND

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY.

REGISTRATION NUMBER: DICT/0155/2022.

SUBMISSION DATE: 21/10/2023

 Table of Contents
ABBREVIATIONS...................................................................................................................................iii

ABSTRACT..............................................................................................................................................iv

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION......................................................................................................1

Background of the project....................................................................................................................1

Problem statement.................................................................................................................................2

Solution...................................................................................................................................................2

Motivation..............................................................................................................................................3

Main objective........................................................................................................................................3

Specific objectives..................................................................................................................................3

Scope of the project...............................................................................................................................3

Significance of the project.....................................................................................................................4

CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW.........................................................................................5

What others have done to resolve the problem?.................................................................................5

Integrated Business Management System........................................................................................5

Spreadsheet Application (file-based approach)...............................................................................5

Strength of the current solution............................................................................................................5

Weakness of the current solution.........................................................................................................5

CHAPTER THREE: PROJECT DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY...................................................6

Architecture design...............................................................................................................................6

Tool and methodologies.........................................................................................................................7

Programming languages.......................................................................................................................7

Integrated development environment..................................................................................................8

Infrastructural software........................................................................................................................8

Framework and library.........................................................................................................................8

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 Methodologies........................................................................................................................................9

Project budget..........................................................................................................................................11

Project schedule.......................................................................................................................................11

Conclusion................................................................................................................................................12

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 ABBREVIATIONS
JUCO - JORDAN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE.

DCIT - DIPLOMA IN COMPUTING AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY.

SMES - SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTERPRISES.

SMS - SHORT MESSAGE

PHP - HYPERTEXT PREPROCESSOR.

HTML - HYPERTEXT MARKUP LANGUAGE

CSS - CASCADING STYLESHEET

MYSQL - MY STRUCTURED QUERY LANGUAGE.

APIs - APPLICATION PROGRAMMING INTERFACES.

IT - INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

ERD - ENTITY RELATIONSHIP DIAGRAM.

DBMS - DATABASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM.

SAIMS - SALES AND INVENTORY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

SSL - SECURE SOCKET LAYER

RDBMS - RELATION DATABASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

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 ABSTRACT
The goal of this project was to design and develop a sales and inventory management system for
small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Tanzania. This system was developed to automate the
management of sales and inventory. Development work included design, development, testing
and implementing of suitable and customized solutions for small business owners and medium
enterprises to easily integrate and manage business transactions daily. The basic functionality of
the system includes product management, orders, stock, employees, purchase orders, payment,
customized reports, invoicing and customer management. Also, will be integrated with the
service of short messages (SMS) services for easy access to reports and instant notifications. The
tools used in the implementation of the system are PHP, MySQL, HTML, CSS, JavaScript,
JQuery and Bootstrap.

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 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
Background of the project
Generally, Automation plays an important role in the global economy and daily experience.
Engineers strive to combine automated devices with mathematical and organizational tools to
create complex systems for a rapidly expanding range of applications. The sales and inventory
management system are an automated system that is used to manage SMEs' business-based
transactions. It is meant to provide the owner and Staff, with information in real-time to make
their work more interesting and less stressful.

Security is of great concern when it comes to the development and implementation of business
solutions such as (SAIMS). The information stored in (SAIMS) is highly sensitive, including
sales data, enterprises and other business data about sales and respective inventory of a business
of an SME. So, by considering the issue of security and sensitivity of sales data I will implement
a strong security solution that utilizes a method of secure transmission such as secure socket
layer (SSL) which encrypts the data as it transmits over the internet.

Internal security is also critical, information will be guarded by passwords with varying levels of
access about what is needed for the job. While most businesses and SMEs now allow employees
to access portions of SAIMS solutions, employees must understand the importance of
maintaining the integrity of the system and protecting the security of the information it contains
(i.e. no password sharing). Safeguards should also be in place to quickly bar terminated
employees’ access to systems.

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Problem statement.
The absence of a well-established solution for sales and inventory management systems for
managing small businesses and SMEs to inconveniences. This greatly affects the loss of sales,
inventory, and invoicing data.

This is basically because of the weakness of the existing system which includes over-reliance on
paper-based work. Paper files consume a lot of the office space, slow recording, processing and
retrieval of sales and inventory records. Accessing and sharing of information by different
departments is difficult due to poor information management.

Solution
After the study and understanding of the challenges that small businesses and SMEs are going
through when it comes to recording and maintaining the sales and inventory data daily. So, I
have come up with this solution which will provide the following solution.

i. Improved data management: An SAIMS can manage all sales, inventory and stock
data as well as information on employees and customers, such as invoices, orders and
payments. With the application of SAIMS, the data of business or SME will be managed
consistently, and securely to ensure that the integrity of data is maintained properly.
ii. Centralization and easy storage: SAIMS apply the theory of RDBMS that will provide
a reliable, efficient, secured and easy way to store data in one centralized database, this
means reporting will be more efficient. Access to compliance records will also be
simplified. It also means there is a central location for business transactions such as
purchase orders, suppliers and product management.
iii. On-demand reporting: SAIMS will provide all types of reports to executives and
management reporting can be done on the fly. For example, a manager might want to
look up daily sales data by branch and could do so without having to contact
Salesperson. Managers can access the information timely as it pertains to sales, stocks,
and invoice details (as appropriate).

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Motivation
My motivation to carry out this project came from my desire to help small businesses integrate
and use technology in their business so that they can take advantage of the technology and grow
their business to the global stage. Mostly motivated by helping customers to use technology to
simplify their communication with businesses that serve them while giving the customer control
of the data that they share on our platform.

Moreover, I have decided to solve the problem of business in the domain of customer care,
particularly customer relationship management, because I want to fill that gap which keeps
business and customer far away from each other and bring them together and ensure they can
work together through technology and ensure they work together.

Main objective.
The main objective of this project is to design, develop and implement local customized software
to help business owner in Tanzania, particularly in the Morogoro region to manage their
business.

Specific objectives.
i. To study and understand the requirements for a Sales, Inventory and Invoice
Management System (SAIMS).
ii. To analyze the requirements for the Sales, Inventory and Invoice Management
System (SAIMS).
iii. To develop and implement the Sales, Inventory and Invoice Management System
(SAIMS). based on the obtained requirements
iv. To implement local customized inventory control, sales control, invoicing, employee
management and expense control modules.
v. To implement an SMS for easy access to information and control of business
transactions in sales, invoicing and inventory.

Scope of the project

The sales, inventory and invoicing management system will only be accessible and usable within
Tanzania and it is intended to support the operation of small businesses and small and medium
enterprises in Tanzania.

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Significance of the project
The study aims to make a web-based System for managing sales, inventory and invoicing
processes in business transactions beneficial to the following.

To the business owners (users), the system will be able to collect and manage required business
information as well as produce reports for the effective management of a business.

To the government, the system will be useful to manage and store business transaction data
having updated records for small businesses and individuals with low or no income this will
ensure proper tax approximation by government agencies, and also help the government plan
how to support small businesses to grow.

To the sales department and other workers, the system increased efficiency in the processing of
sales data which was finished by just a click of a button thus replacing the former long paper
collection process.

To future system developers (students and academicians), being student or standalone

developers, this system could be used as a reference. At some point, it could help in learning and
innovation to their knowledge.

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 CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW
What others have done to resolve the problem?
Integrated Business Management System
An Integrated Business Management System (IBMS) is used to enhance the administrative
capabilities of the business in terms of monitoring and managing information on sales while
improving the efficiency and productivity of the decision-making.

Spreadsheet Application (file-based approach)

A file-based system is a collection of application programs that perform services for users
wishing to access information. Each program within a file-based system defines and manages its
data. Spreadsheets have been applied in the storage of data about daily business transactions and
information about them.

Strength of the current solution

Security. A secure system to modernize inmate record maintenance and searching operations.
It also facilitates the electronic processing of inmate records and the management of such
activities to provide a higher level of compliance and faster service with lower costs and higher
efficiency.

Weakness of the current solution.

Poor information accessibility. The system is stand-alone and therefore centralized access and
securing of information is difficult, Also the system does not track records of purchasing orders,
and sales which may be a future reference when the need arises.
Data redundancy. Duplication of data since data is held by different programs, results in wasted
space and potentially different values and or different formats for the same item.
Also, the system has poor security features and as a result, unauthorized persons can be able to
access data.

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 CHAPTER THREE: PROJECT DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY.
Architecture design.

SALES AND INVENTORY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM SOLUTION MODEL

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Tool and methodologies
Since there is no single tool or methodology that can be used all alone, and it goes by to this
project. There is a combination of different tools and methodologies that will be used to develop
and implement the proposed solution. For clarity, they are categorized into four major categories.

Programming languages.
i. Javascript. Is a high-level, dynamic and interpreted programming language. It has
been standardized by ECMAScript language specification. It is most commonly used
as part of web browsers, whose implementations allow client-side scripts to interact
with the user, control the browser, communicate asynchronously, and alter the
document content that is displayed. The application of JavaScript to use outside of
web pages for example, in PDF documents, site-specific browsers, and desktop
widgets is also significant.
ii. PHP Language. PHP is a server-side scripting language designed for Web
development. It runs on the server and generally cannot run on its own unless in
response to an event. It is designed for use with HTML such that when invoked, it
returns HTML to the browser. It provides more flexibility than HTML alone. It is
platform independent, powerful, robust and scalable, web development specific
iii. HTML Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). Is the standard markup language
for creating web pages and web applications, Web browsers receive HTML
documents from a webserver or local storage and render them into multimedia web
pages. HTML describes the structure of a web page semantically and originally
included cues for the appearance of the document. HTML elements are the building
blocks of HTML pages.
iv. CSS Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Is a style sheet language used for describing the
presentation of a document written in a markup language, although, most often used
to set the visual style of web pages and user interfaces written in HTML and
XHTML, the language can be applied to any XML document, including plain XML,
SVG and XUL, and applies to rendering in speech, or on other media. Used by most
websites to create visually engaging webpages, and user interfaces for web
applications.

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Integrated development environment.
i. Sublime text.
ii. Toad Data Modeler Toad Data Modeler is a database design tool that allows
users to visually create, maintain and document new or existing database systems.
Toad Data Modeler allows users to create logical, physical and universal entity
relationship diagrams (ERD) - models. This tool supports various database-
specific items and therefore it is necessary to select a target database system for a
physical ERD. Key features include: SQL/DDL code generation, Reverse
engineering, Model documentation, Model verification, Model synchronization

Infrastructural software.
i. XAMPP. XAMPP is an archetypal model of web service solution stacks, named
as an acronym of the names of its original four open-source components: the
Windows operating system, the Apache HTTP Server, the MySQL relational
database management system (RDBMS), and the PHP programming language.
ii. MySQL. MySQL is an open-source database that is platform-independent and
can easily interface with other scripting languages, but it works best with PHP.
Deploying a MySQL database is cheap and easy, it doesn’t require special
hardware or software requirements. It can work on any web server. It runs on
many operating systems. Also, it includes data security layers that protect
sensitive data from intruders, therefore secure to use.

Framework and library

i. Twitter Bootstrap. is a free and open-source front-end web framework for
designing websites and web applications. It contains HTML- and CSS-based
design templates for typography, forms, buttons, navigation and other interface
components, as well as optional JavaScript extensions. Unlike many web
frameworks, it concerns itself with front-end development only. Bootstrap
provides a set of style sheets that provide basic style definitions for all key HTML
components. These provide a uniform, modern appearance for formatting text,
tables and form elements. Bootstrap comes with several JavaScript components in
the form of jQuery plugins.

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 ii. jQuery. Core Library jQuery, at its core, is a DOM (Document Object Model)
manipulation library. The DOM is a tree-structure representation of all the
elements of a Web page and jQuery simplifies the syntax for finding, selecting,
and manipulating these DOM elements. For example, jQuery can be used for
finding an element in the document with a certain property (e.g. all elements with
an h1 tag), changing one or more of its attributes (e.g. colour, visibility), or
making it respond to an event (e.g. a mouse clicks). jQuery also provides a
paradigm for event handling that goes beyond basic DOM element selection and
manipulation. The event assignment and the event callback function definition are
done in a single step in a single location in the code.

Methodologies.
Depending on the complexities and scope of the system I will follow the standard of the industry
by using one of the specified development methodologies which will help to deliver the expected
solution and an acceptable quality. So, I propose using the waterfall methodology for the
development of the proposed solution.

The Waterfall model is a sequential design process, often used in software development
processes. It takes the fundamental process activities of specification, development, validation
and evolution and represents them as separate process phases such as requirement specification,
software design, coding, implementation, testing and finally the maintenance phase.

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FIGURE 1: Diagram of waterfall methodology.

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 Project budget
SN ITEM PRICE/UNIT UNIT TOTAL
1. Data bundle Tshs. 20,00/= @1GB 30GB Tshs. 60,000/=

2. Stationeries varies with services Varies Tshs. 60,000/=

3. Transport fare Varies Varies Tshs. 30,000/=

4. Communication Varies Varies Tshs. 20,000/=

5. Domain name Tshs. 30,000/= @year 1year Tshs. 30,000/=

6. Hosting plan Tshs. 70,000/= @1 year 1year Tshs. 70,000/=

Total Tshs. 270,000/=

Project schedule
TASK TASK ALLOCATED START END STATUS
ID TIME DATE DATE
TSK001 Requirement gathering 7 days 1/3/2024 10/3/2024 On progress

TSK002 Requirement analysis and 10 days 11/3/2024 20/3/2024 On progress

documentation
TSK003 System analysis and design 20 days 20/03/2024 10/04/2024 On progress.

TSK004 Development and 30 days 10/04/2024 10/05/2024 On Progress

implementation
TSK005 System testing 7 days 11/05/2024 18/05/2024 On progress

TSK006 Writing system report 10 days 19/05/2024 30/05/2024 On progress.

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 Conclusion
This project covered the necessary details involved in designing an online sales and inventory
management system. The system captures all the information required from workers (using an
online form) and keeps them in a database. The stakeholders in this application include different
individuals ranging from small business owners, entrepreneurs, IT companies, employees and
SMEs. The adopted method of information generation in this work includes related literature and
surfing the Internet for current trends and best practices, while the method of implementation
was the use of XAMPP software. The basic requirement of the user of the SAIMS is given
preference during the interface design. Therefore, this project if embraced, would address the
problems of the existing system outlined earlier.

Conclusion Today’s advanced technology is noticeable in the application of computers to solve

our present challenges, this could serve as inspiration for the automation of sales and inventory-
keeping processes in small businesses as well as small and medium enterprises to enhance
productivity among organizations. This project has focused on the design and implementation of
a web-based SAIMS for addressing challenges faced by small business owners, employees and
managers of SMEs. Various design and implementation tools have been employed for the
successful completion of this work. The design and implementation tools were selected based on

a. Review of similar work successfully implemented.

b. A careful selection of open source and state-of-the-art design/implementation tools like
Microsoft Visio (for ER diagrams), adobe (for user interface mockups) and XAMPP (for
database development and software coding).

This project has demonstrated fulfilment of the vital needs of small businesses and SMEs by
developing a web-based application to replace the manual system used by small business
operations and SMEs. The system when fully adopted will enhance the process of data
collection, data query, data manipulation and data storage.

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