CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

• Introduction

Billing is a financial accounting concept for business organizations such as hotel industry to bill their customers for services rendered and the billing report is utilized by management to know the income generated. Hotel billing record system is used to capture the bill record of customers to come up with a total amount to be paid by the customer. The information is saved to a database to enable management or users to retrieve saved billing records.

The service rendered by hotel industry is associated with charges. It is therefore pertinent that accurate billing of the service rendered is properly documented. The application of the computer system to aid business transaction is very significant. This is because the computer system provides features such as storage, computation, easy retrieval of information etc. in addition, the computer system is very fast and accurate as against manual systems of recording and retrieving information. Virtually all organizations are now shifting from their manual systems to computerized systems as a result of the benefits it presents. Hotel industries are among the league of organization that can make use of the computer system and software solution to manage their billing records.

1.1 Statement of the Problem

1. The manual billing system is time consuming: It takes time to compute the bill of customers in the existing system due to the manual process being used.
2. Human error due to miscalculations: Miscalculations can occur as a result of human error such as error of omission and wrong calculation.
3. It is difficult to easily manage and update billing information: If there is need to correct a billing record or make changes, it will be difficult to instantly find and update the bill record of the particular customer.

1.2 Aim and objectives of the study

The aim of the study is to develop a billing system for hotel industry. This will aid in the computation of customers billing information pertaining to hotel services offered so that billing reports can be presented when needed.

The following are the objectives to facilitate the stated aim:

• To design a system to compute billing information of customers of the hotel industry.
• To design a system that can be used to store customers billing records.
• To implement a system that can be used to retrieve and update customer billing records easily.

1.3 Scope of the Study

This study covers Customer Billing System for Hotel Industry, a case study of Four points by sheraton, Ikot Ekpene.

1.4 Significance of the study

The significance of the study is that it will provide a fast and easy way for accurate computation of billing records and easy retrieval of financial information of the hotel industry. It will facilitate easy management of the hotel industry.

1.5 Organization of Research

This research work is organized into five chapters. Chapter one is concerned with the introduction of the research study and it presents the preliminaries, theoretical background, statement of the problem, aim and objectives of the study, significance of the study, scope of the study, organization of the research and definition of terms.

Chapter two focuses on the literature review, the contributions of other scholars on the subject matter is discussed.

Chapter three is concerned with the system analysis and design. It presents the research methodology used in the development of the system, it analyzes the present system to identify the problems and provides information on the advantages and disadvantages of the proposed system. The system design is also presented in this chapter.

Chapter four presents the system implementation and documentation, the choice of programming language, analysis of modules, choice of programming language and system requirements for implementation.

Chapter five focuses on the summary, constraints of the study, conclusion and recommendations are provided in this chapter based on the study carried out.

1.6 Definition of terms

Billing – The activity of charging a client for goods and services rendered.

Accounting – the activity, practice, or profession of maintaining the business records of a person or organization.

System – a combination of components working together to achieve a particular goal.

Software – programs and applications that can be run on a computer system (Encarta, 2009).

Management – The organizing and controlling of the affairs of a business or sector of a business.

Hotel –An establishment that provide accommodation and other services for paying guests.