GHANA TELECOM UNIVERSITY COLLEGE

FACULTY OF INFORMATICS

LAUNDRY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM FOR CLEAN CARE LAUNDRY SERVICES

PROJECT TYPE: DEVELOPMENT

FINAL YEAR UNDERGRADUATE PROJECT PROPOSAL BY Daniel Perez Fiadzeawu B020908074 Veronica Marfo B0209080

TABLE OF CONTENT

TITLE INTRODUCTION/BACKGROUND AIM AND 2 3

PAGE

OBJECTIVES 4 5 DELIVERABLES 5 6 6

OUTCOME AND

.. METHODOLOGY

.. RESOURCES ... PROJECT .... CONCLUSION PLAN

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1. INTRODUCTION/BACKGROUND

Most Laundry services in Ghana use the manual way of recording their activities, which comes with its own disadvantages such as poor record keeping, no backups, wrong entries, feedback, confirmation and alert system (to inform customers immediately their items are ready for pickup). Difficulties and defects in billing and generating periodic report on services rendered. The question to how can we produce a computerised system that will transform the manual way of keeping good account of laundry services, inspired us to evolve the system used by Clean Care and produce an appropriate automation system that will cater for their needs and introduce them to a new and innovative way of operating their business. Clean Care is a laundry and cleaning service provider, who deals in both domestic and industrial cleaning on daily, weekly, quarterly and yearly bases. They have two main departments; the laundry and the cleaning department. The laundry department undertake laundry activities like garment and carpet washing and most materials that are likely to be brought in by customers themselves. The cleaning departments focus is on the industries where they bid for contracts to engage in industrial cleaning based on the contractual agreement and also do cleaning in
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various homes. Our focus is on the laundry department. In their manual way of keeping records, records are kept in three books. They have the invoice book which keeps a carbon copy of invoice issued to both regular and irregular customers. They also have the Sales book used for recording the various attribute of item brought and it is crossed out when the full amount paid by the customer has been recorded into the income book. The income book keeps record of invoice numbers and the amount paid in order to track their income. Problem faced by this system includes miscalculation of figures,

difficulties in tracking daily and periodic transactions and settling discrepancies since records are kept in three books, no backups in case of any damages to their records, poor tracking of staffs who undertake industrial cleaning, no system in place to prepare and keep records on staff salary. Records are also in the reach of staff hence, there is difficulty in limiting staffs on which record can be viewed by whom or which record cannot be viewed by others and in all, it is time consuming. Though our main focus is on laundry, the laundry management system will be integrated with an sms and a basic payroll system. The laundry section will help keep records on daily and periodic services rendered regular and irregular customer records. This will ensure that proper account is given at any desirable time and track the progress of transactions. It will also help keep track of staffs that are deployed at various industrial units to undertake laundry activities. The sms section provides a new and easy way of communicating to clients when items are ready for collection. This sms have drafted message that will be automatically sent to all customers whose items are ready for collection or any other information that may be relevant to customers. All what the entry officer or staff needs to do is to have draft one message which will be sent all the time and enter the ID of customers whose items are ready for collection. messages can also be received from customers. The payroll section will assist employees in keeping records on staff salary, salary deduction, bonuses and others.

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2. AIM AND OBJECTIVES

AIM The aim of this project is to streamline the record keeping and management of laundry services, customers, staffs and salary information. OBJECTIVE The system will be developed to cater for three modules which include the Laundry, payroll and sms module. These modules will cater for the following objectives: Keeping record on clothings and items brought for laundry Register ID for various items which will be used for labelling Register staff and manage their information and salary Register Regular and irregular customer information
Accurately manage daily expenditures Register staff and salary information

send sms to customers whose items are ready for collection And others 3. OUTCOME AND DELIVERABLES On completion, we expect to have a system that will help keep track and record of laundry services At the Laundry section, users of the system can keep record on items received and items delivered to customers and any other laundry services that are undertaken. This unit will also generate report on:
Invoice

Daily and periodic transactions Customer information Part and full payment made by customers Transaction made by a particular staff Pending and completed customers items

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The payroll section will generate and print various salary reports such as: some payroll report Salary Pay Slip, Salary List To Bank Salary List To IRS Salary List To SSNIT
Salary Register

The sms section is used in sending and receiving messages from clients though purposely for sending drafted messages to clients of finished items and also generates report on: Sent and recieved messages and their totals respectively. Message status whether delivered, pending or failed messages.

4. METHODOLOGY Approach we intend using in undertaking this project is 1. Involve the staff by interviewing them on their current operations and how they will like the system to look and function. We are considering this because they are the end users of the final product.
2. We will also observe their daily operations to see what additional

information may have been missing and could be a valuable add-on to our system. 3. We will also consider the work of others on laundry management system as well as some laundry services that are using automated systems. 4. Develop the final product while still contacting our client for any further information. 5. The final product will be deployed and tested for client feedback. 6. Debugging if any.

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5. RESOURCES The system will be developed using the following resources; Software Visual Studio 2008: A Microsoft Interface Development Environment (IDE) that is used to develop application in programming languages like C#, vb.net, J#, C++. However, this system will be developed using vb.net and this will be the front-end of the application. Microsoft SQL Server 2008: Database software which constitute the back-end of the application. The advantage of this database is that it has more storage capacity that can hold several Gigabytes of data as compared to database management software like Microsoft Access that can hold up to 2GB of data. Windows based platform Hardware A 15 inch laptop computer with a Pentium 4, 2GHz of processor speed, 2GB RAM and a hard disk of 40GB or any other advance system. Cost We will need money for Sms gateway Transportation Miscellaneous

6. PROJECT PLAN The system will involve a series of activities within an estimated duration. Below are the various activity and time schedule. Activity Feasibility studies Data gathering and analysis Database design Interface design
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Duration 5 days 1 week 1 week 1 week

Application codding Testing and debugging Write ups

2 months 2 weeks 2 months

7. CONCLUSION This system is feasible in that, it will meet the organizations need as well as other companies who engage in laundry services and shall not involve any complex procedures which will render the project unattainable.

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