Meyers Pharmaceutical Company, a drug manufacturer, has the following system for billing and recording accounts receivable: (1) An incoming customer's purchase order is received in the order department by a clerk who prepares a prenumbered Company sales order form in which is inserted the pertinent information, such as the customer's name and address, customer's account number, and quantity and items ordered. After the sales order form has been prepared, the customer's purchase order is stapled to it. (2) The sales order form is then passed to the credit department for credit approval. Rough approximations of the billing values of the orders are made in the credit department for those accounts on which credit limitations re imposed. After investigation, approval of credit is noted on the form. (3) Next the sales order form is passed to the billing department where a clerk types the customers invoice on a billing machine that cross multiples the number of items and the unit price, then adds the automatically extended amounts for the total amount of the invoice. The billing clerk determines the unit prices for the items from a list of billing prices. The billing machine has registers that automatically accumulate daily totals of customer account numbers and invoice amounts to provide hash totals and control amounts. These totals, which are inserted in a daily record book, serve as predetermined batch totals for verification of computer inputs. The billing is done on prenumbered, continuous, carbon interleaved forms having the following designations: a. customers copy b. sales department copy for information purposes. C. File copy d. Shipping department copy which serves as a shipping order. Bills of lading are also prepared as carbon copy by products of the invoicing procedure. (4) The shipping department copy of the invoice and the bills of lading are then sent to the shipping department. After the order has been shipped, copies of the bill of lading are returned to the billing department. The shipping department copy of the invoice is filled in the shipping department. (5) In the billing department one copy of the bill of lading is attached to the customers copy of the invoice and both are mailed to the customer. The other copy of the bill of lading, together with sales order form, is then stapled to the invoice file copy and filled in invoice numerical order. (6) A key to tape data entry device is connected to the billing machine so that cassette tapes are created during the preparation of the invoices. The invoice records on the cassette tapes then become that means by which the sales data are transmitted to a computer for preparation of the sales journal accounts receivable subsidiary ledger and perpetual inventory records. The cassette tapes are fed to the computer in batches. One days accumulation of tapes comprises a batch. After the tapes have been processed by computer, they are placed in files and held for about two years.

Required:

Flowchart the billing system as a means of understanding the system.

Determine the weaknesses and recommended improvements in the system