Systems Concepts
Kate Myers is a student at Memorial University. Her system for tracking financesincludes the following. Kate has two credit cards; each day she places the receipts forany items purchased on credit in a manila envelope on her desk. She checks thesereceipts against the credit card bills at the end of the month. Any other financial itemthat Kate thinks might be useful later is also placed into the envelope. (An examplewould be a payroll stub from her job as a worker in the campus cafeteria.) Kate recordsany cheque written in her chequebook register at the time she writes it. Shortly after herbank statement arrives, she enters any cheques written and deposits made intoQuicken1 (the software program she uses to balance her chequebook). She then reconcilesher bank statement against the Quicken account and prints a reconciliation report.From time to time, Kate phones home to ask her mother to add more money to herbank account. (Kate could e-mail or text her mom, but she's found that her motherappreciates the personal touch of a phone call, and the money appears more quicklywhenever Kate phones.) Her mother, who has copies of the deposit slips for Kate's account, mails a cheque (from her own account) with a deposit slip to Kate's account.Whenever this occurs, Kate logs on to Bluemountain.com and e-mails her mother anelectronic thank you card.The following items are associated with this financial system:
a. Manila envelope
b. Chequebook
c. Cheques and deposit slips
d. Computer and printer
e. Quicken program
f. Credit cards
g. Credit card receipts
h. Payroll stubs, etc.
i. Monthly bank statements
j. Reconciliation report
k. Phone
Required:
1. What are the objectives of Kate's financial system? What processes can you identify?
2. Classify the items into one of the following categories:
a. Interrelated parts
b. Inputs
c. Outputs
3. Draw an operational model for the financial system.