The Alan Company Uses a Computerized Payroll System to Pay Its Employees Weekly

System Flowchart

Sales orders are immediately entered into the computer via the keyboard as soon as they are placed. Once the orders are entered, an automated editing program is executed. This is followed by an automated program that sorts the sales orders by customer number. The resulting sorted sales order file is used to update a customer master file, which is stored on a magnetic disk. The update program also produces an error listing and a control report, which are sent to the data entry department.

System Flowchart

Background: The Alan Company uses a computerized payroll system to pay its employees weekly. All employee information is stored on magnetic disk in the payroll master file. This file contains the name, address, social security number, pay rate and deduction information for each employee and is ordered by employee social security number.

During the week, any changes to this basic employee information are submitted on payroll change request documents. The information from the documents is keyed directly onto a magnetic tape by the personnel department. At the end of the week, this tape is sorted by employee social security number and then subjected to several automated edit checks. Errors found during the editing process are printed on the Payroll Master File Error Report and sent to the personnel department to be re-keyed onto the tape. The sorted and edited changes are then applied to the payroll master file in order to update the file.

At the end of each week, after the payroll master file has been updated, payroll processing begins. Time cards are received from the production departments and keyed by the data entry department into a transaction file that is temporarily stored. The file is sorted by employee social security number and subjected to automated edit checks. Errors found during the edit process are displayed on a terminal, corrected by a data entry clerk, and resubmitted to the edit process. Once all time card information is correct, the time card information and the previously updated payroll master file are used by an automated program to prepare paychecks. In addition to the paychecks, the program produces a control report listing all the current payroll information that is sent to the payroll department.