BANKING APPLICARION

Electronic Fund Transfer (ETF)

EFT is a system that allows money transfer instructions to be sentdirectly to a bank’s computer system. Upon receiving one of these instructions, the computer system automatically transfers the specified amount from one account to another.

Transfer instructions can come from other banks or frombusinesses.

A very common use of EFT is when a large business pays its employees’ salaries. On pay day, the businesses tells the bank to move money from the business account to the employees’ bank accounts…

Other examples of where EFT is used are discussed in some of the following sections…

If money is transferred from one bank account to another, nothing isphysically moved – no piles of cash are picked up and moved from one place to another.

The amount of money in a bank account is simply a number in the bank’s computer system.

When money is transferred between accounts, all that happens is one number in the system gets bigger and another gets smaller.

Obviously the EFT system has to be very secure – the bank can’t allow just anyone to sent transfer instructions (otherwise we would all be sending messages to bank computers to move money into our accounts!)

The EFT system uses very strongencryption for all messages and the encryption keys are only given to trusted partners (other banks and big businesses).

Using Cash Machines (ATMs)

ATMs can be used to for a range of banking services…

• Withdrawing cash
• Depositing money
• Checking the balance of accounts
• Transferring money between accounts
• Paying bills

A customer identifies him/herself and their bank account by using abank card. The card is inserted into the ATM where it is read by amagnetic strip reader or a smart card reader. The customer also types a secret PIN into the ATM’s numeric keypad to confirm that they are the real owner of the card

ATMs can be used by customers of other banks as the ATM can useEFT…

If a customer of Bank A uses her debit card to withdraw cash from an ATM belonging to Bank B:

1. Bank B gives her the cash
2. Bank B now is owed money by Bank A
3. Bank B sends an EFT instruction to Bank A asking for money to be transferred from the customer’s account to Bank B.
4. Bank B has now been paid back

Electronic Payments for Goods (EFTPOS)

Banks allow goods to be paid for electronically, using a system calledElectronic Fund Transfer at Point-of-Sale (EFTPOS).

A full description of EFTPOS can be found here.

Internet Banking

It is now very common for bank customers to access their bank account from home using on-line banking services.

Customers use a computer and connect to the bank’s secure (encrypted) website where they login (usually with a username and a password)

Customers can use the on-line banking system to…

• Check the balance of bank accounts
• Pay bills
• Transfer money between accounts (using EFT)
• Apply for loans, or other services

Compared to traveling to your actual bank, Internet banking has a fewadvantages…

• More convenient – can be used 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
• Saves time and money since you don’t have to travel anywhere to use it
• Data can be downloaded and analysed (e.g. in a spreadsheet) which can help with planning budgets

But there are some disadvantages too…

• Requires you to have a computer and Internet access to use it
• Some people prefer to speak to a person (personal service)
• If your account is hacked, or your username / password is stolen (e.g. if your computer has malware) money could be stolen from your account

Telephone Banking

This is similar to Internet banking, but does not require a computer, only a normal telephone.

The system works by you calling the bank’s telephone banking number then…

• You enter your account number (using the phone’s number keys)
• You enter your PIN / secret code
• You then hear various options: (“Press 1 to find your balance, Press 2 to transfer money…”)
• You pick an option (using the phone’s number keys)
• And so on…

Customers can use the telephone banking system to…

• Check the balance of bank accounts
• Pay bills
• Transfer money between accounts (using EFT)
• Speak to a bank representative to get financial advice

The advantages of telephone banking are similar to Internet banking, but there are some extra things…

• You don’t need a computer
• You can speak to an actual person

The disadvantage compared to Internet banking…

• The system can be difficult to use (working through all of those menus)

Processing Cheques (Cheque ‘Clearing’)

Banks have to deal with thousands of hand-written, paper chequesevery day.

When a cheque arrives at a bank, the information on the cheque has to be entered into the bank’s computer system so that the correct funds can be transferred between the correct accounts. Entering this data quickly and accurately is a time-consuming and difficult task.

To help speed things up, a special system of printing is used on cheques that can be read by a reader connected to the computer system. At the bottom of every cheque, printed in a special font usingmagnetic ink, is the bank account number and cheque number:

Each cheque is passed through an MICR READER  that can read these special numbers. (A small reader is shown here, but in large banks the MICR readers are much bigger and can thousands hundreds of cheques.

The hand-written part of the cheque (the payee and the value of payment) can be entered into the computer system by either using ahuman to read the writing and typing the data in, or by using OCR.

What is an Expert System?

An expert system is computer software that attempts to act like a human expert on a particular subject area.

Expert systems are often used to advise non-experts in situations where a human expert in unavailable (for example it may be too expensive to employ a human expert, or it might be a difficult to reach location).

How Do Expert Systems Work?

An expert system is made up of three parts:

A user interface – This is the system that allows a non-expert user to query (question) the expert system, and to receive advice. The user-interface is designed to be a simple to use as possible.

A knowledge base – This is a collection of facts and rules. The knowledge base is created from information provided by human experts

An inference engine – This acts rather like a search engine, examining the knowledge base for information that matches the user’s query

The non-expert user queries the expert system. This is done by asking a question, or by answering questions asked by the expert system.

The inference engine uses the query to search the knowledge base and then provides an answer or some advice to the user.

Where Are Expert Systems Used?

Medical diagnosis (the knowledge base would contain medical information, the symptoms of the patient would be used as the query, and the advice would be a diagnose of the patient’s illness)

 

Playing strategy games like chess against a computer (the knowledge base would contain strategies and moves, the player’s moves would be used as the query, and the output would be the computer’s ‘expert’ moves)

 

Providing financial advice – whether to invest in a business, etc. (the knowledge base would contain data about the performance of financial markets and businesses in the past)

 

Helping to identify items such as plants / animals / rocks / etc. (the knowledge base would contain characteristics of every item, the details of an unknown item would be used as the query, and the advice would be a likely identification)

 

Helping to discover locations to drill for water / oil (the knowledge base would contain characteristics of likely rock formations where oil / water could be found, the details of a particular location would be used as the query, and the advice would be the likelihood of finding oil / water there)

 

Helping to diagnose car engine problems (like medical diagnosis, but for cars!)

Can Expert Systems Make Mistakes?

 

Human experts make mistakes all the time (people forget things, etc.) so you might imagine that a computer-based expert system would be much better to have around.

 

However expert systems can some problems:

Can’t easily adapt to new circumstances (e.g. if they are presented with totally unexpected data, they are unable to process it)

Can be difficult to use (if the non-expert user makes mistakes when using the system, the resulting advice could be very wrong)

They have no ‘common sense’ (a human user tends to notice obvious errors, whereas a computer wouldn’t)

batch processing

Online booking system

computers are often used to book (reserve) air flights, seats in the cinema, rooms in a hotel, tables in a restaurant, etc.

In all of the above examples, there are a limited number of items (seats on a plane, rooms in a hotel, etc.) which need to be allocated.

 

It is very important that any booking system prevents the same item being booked twice (double-booking).

So How do Booking Systems Work?

 

If we were talking about a single, small cinema, where you had to queue up to buy tickets at the front door, the reservation system would be very simple: We could just use a piece of paper and tick off seats as they were reserved.

 

However, most booking systems are much more complex than this. A typical booking system must cope with booking requests from many different sources, all arriving at the same time. For example, flights can be booked by customers online, by travel agents in dozens of different offices, by businesses, etc.

How do booking systems manage all these bookings without making any double-bookings?

All Booking Systems are Real-Time

The Key to all booking systems is the fact that they are real-time systems.

A real-time system is one where every input is processed immediately, so that the resulting output is ready before the next input is processed.

In the case of a booking system…

The inputs are booking requests

The processing involves checking if bookings are possible, and if so making the bookings

The outputs are booking confirmations / rejections

Because a booking system is real-time, when a booking request arrives, the previous booking has already been fully processed. This is what prevents double-booking.

An Example…

 

Imagine that two people are using an airline’s website to try and book seats on a flight. Both people try to book seat 38C and the same time…

Even though the booking requests are made at the same time, one request will be received by the airline’s computer just before the other (since requests come into the system through a ‘queue’)

 

This is what happens:

Input: Please reserve seat 38C

Process: Has seat 38C already been booked? No… so book it

Output: Booking confirmed for seat 38C

Input: Please reserve seat 38C

Process: Has seat 38C already been booked? Yes!

Output: Booking rejected

You can see that the first input is fully processed before the next one. So seat 38C doesn’t get booked twice.

What is pay roll ?

The ‘payroll’ of a business is the system used to calculate the salary (how much they are paid for their work) of each employee.

The inputs to a payroll system are:

Employee code (used to lookup the employee’s other details, e.g. name, bank account, etc.)

Hours worked

Rate of pay (e.g. $25 per hour)

The processing involves the following calculation:

 

Pay = Hours Worked X Rate of Pay

 

The outputs from a payroll system are:

A printed payslip (given to the employee to show how his/her pay was calculated)

A cheque, or an EFT payment directly into the employee’s bank account

Many places of work automatically record hours worked by the employees using systems such as swipe-cards or fingerprint readers.

 

When an employee arrives at work, they swipe their ID card, and then do the same when they leave.

Hours worked = Time out – Time in

Sometimes money may be added on to a person’s pay (e.g. for working extra ‘overtime’)

Sometimes pay is taken away (e.g. as tax, or health insurance payments.

How is a Payroll Processed?

 

The payroll is usually processed once a week or once a month (depending upon how often the business pays its employees).

 

This means that batch-processing is ideal for payroll processing:

Working hours data is collected into a batch

The data can be processed in one go at the end of the week/month

The same calculations will be performed on all the data

No user input is required during the processing

The processing can be done during quiet times when the computer system is not being used for other things (e.g. at night)

Billing systems

Our Electricity Customer Care and Billing (CC&B)  is a solution we deploy to customers that have the following profile qualities;

Have arrangements with the likes of AEMO or similar market systems

Run a utility company that retails electricity to residential and or commercial and industrial customers

You hold a valid license to Sell electricity at Retail

Require a platform that enables you to manage all customer interactions including;

Maintaining Customer information

Customer sign ups online or over the phone

Move in and move outs

Customer enquiries regarding billing and payments , rate cards

Bill presentation on line with itemised breakdown

Bill presentation by post or PDF

Payment platforms including

Pay by phone

Pay over the counter (eg Australia Post)

Pay online with Credit Card

Direct Debit from credit card

Direct Debit from Bank Account

Tokenised payments

SMS Payment confirmations

Notifications to customers

SMS

Post

Online

Email

Reporting requirements including

NEM Reports

Aged Recs

Margin analysis

Bad debt reports

Sales and Churn reports

Ombudsman reports and more

 

What is Stock Control?

 

 

Every business needs to keep track of the items that it manufactures or sells (the stock). The system that monitors the items in stock is called the stock control system.

 

E.g. in a store, the stock includes all of the items on the shelves and out the back in the storeroom.

It is important that a business does not keep too much stock, nor too little.

Too much stock costs money as you have to store it all somewhere

Too much perishable stock (e.g. food) means that it may go bad before it is sold

Too little stock means that you might run out of stock before the next delivery arrives

Data in a Stock Control System

A stock control system is basically a database.

Each record (row) of the database is identified by an item code (the primary key).

Other fields in each record would include:

Description

Item price

Stock level (the number of items held in stock)

Minimum stock level (when stock falls below this, it needs to be reordered)

Reorder quantity (how many items we should order each time)

Receiving New Stock

When items are added in to stock (because a delivery has arrived) this is recorded in the stock control system.

The code of the new items is input to the system (usually using a barcode scanner, or similar technology). The record for the item is found in the stock database, or a new record is created, and the stock level is increased.

In many stores, the POS system is directly linked to the stock control system, so that stock levels are adjusted as soon as an item is sold.

Selling / Delivering Stock

 

When items are taken from stock (because they have been sold, or delivered somewhere) this is recorded in the stock control system.

 

The code of the item is being sold/delivered is input to the system (usually using a barcode scanner, or similar technology). The record for the item is found in the stock database, and the stock level is decreased.

In many stores, the POS system is directly linked to the stock control system, so that stock levels are adjusted as soon as an item is sold.

Automatic Re-Ordering of Stock

 

Stock control systems make it very easy for stock levels to be monitored, and for stock to be reordered when it is running low.

The stock control system regularly goes through all the records in the stock database and checks if the stock level is less than the minimum stock level.

Is Stock Level < Minimum Stock Level ?

If the stock is too low, it is reordered from the supplier. The quantity that is ordered is read from the stock database (larger amounts for more popular items)