Seminar 3

Seminar 3 Accounting

What a refreshing morning!

James told us that from this week on, the first part of the seminar would be a recap for the topic discussed last week. This would probably be in the form of a practice like what we did this week.

Review Business Process

We were given a process flow chart which showed the employee claim process of a company, and we were asked to improve this process. It was surprising that the process was simplified from a real large-scale company, because the process was very tedious and inefficient given that they actually got a Claims System. The employee must input the claim details twice: once into the claims form, and once into Claims System. And the physical receipts must go with the printed claims form and go through the whole process. Then the forms need to be checked and signed twice, first by the department manager and then by the payroll clerk. I think this is even more inefficient than my experience in CCAs, where we only need to hand in the receipts and describe the usage of the consumption in a massage to the treasurer. I know for a big company, a more ordered system is needed, but if the process is unnecessarily time-consuming, the overhead might offset the benefit of the process. The department manager could have dealt with many other affairs if he or she does not need to check the tallied information on the forms. 

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As I've learned from Organisational Behaviour, the working environment is very important for employees. If the claim process was simpler, the employees might be more pleasant, and the productivity might be increased. Also, the strict checking process might make employees feel untrusted, so it would be hard to link themselves to the company sentimentally, which is not good for the development of the company. Maybe I’ve digressed, but that was indeed what I thought.

So now let’s come back. The following improvements were suggested during the seminar.    

The first suggestion was to be able to perform partial rejection. So when only part of the claims failed, the successful part need not to be claimed again.

Secondly, the physical receipts were troublesome, since they could be easily lost or damaged. Therefore, they need to be handled separately. Some classmates suggested that the physical receipts were not necessary in the process, and they could be collected only at the end to verify the results. I think this was reasonable, and another way was to scan the receipts at the beginning of the process, and the soft copy would go through the process. In whichever ways, the physical receipts were wiped out from the main process. Also, the claims form need not to be printed.

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The third improvement was suggested to be on the claim system, the software. The system only served as a storeroom to record the claims, but actually there were much more it could do to make the process more efficient. If the system could check the tallied records, one step could be deleted from the process. The system could also check if the claims amount exceeded the entitled amount, which would simplify the payroll process. However, many people feel that the virtual system is not reliable, even if the system can make the process much simpler and create few errors.

Additionally, I got another suggestion. The company can set some certain areas where the employee can apply for the claims. For example, the business trip, the transportation, and the social dinner engagement etc, and for each area, a distinct claim form is designed, so the employees must choose which form should be completed. In this way, the chance that the claim is valid may be increased, since the employee would know that the claim was not allowed if they could not find a suitable form to complete.  

Accounting

This topic sounds so familiar! But the practices showed that I've forgot half of what I’ve learned in the course Accounting I and II… So basically, this student led session was mainly about the review of the accounting knowledge we’ve learned. But of course I’ve gained something new besides revision.

I was most impressed by the story of the original accounting process without a software system. We need three people respectively responsible for journals, ledgers and a specific account eg. AR account. So the computer system should also comprise of these three parts. This reminds me of what I’ve learned in the course BC2402 Data Management & Business Intelligence, where the instructor told us that never make up the algorithm on our own. When we design the software, we should always go back to the origin and think about what was the algorithm when people didn’t have computer. This is the same when we try to comprehend complicated software like SAP, the process in reality must be in our mind.

In addition, I realized that ERP systems not only make accounting system more efficient but also more precise. Since the accounting department is not in the picture when transactions happen, the system helps pass the transaction information in time.