Sue's Flowers Revenue Business Process Project

(Example used in lectures to demonstrate the process of developing an ERD)

Sue Hernandez is the owner and operator of a small flower shop, Sue's Flowers. She has decided to

develop a database system to track her sales, inventory, accounts receivable and cash receipts. This

system is used for large orders that are arranged in advance. However, she does not have time to do

the development herself. Therefore, she has hired you to design and implement the system for her.

She describes the requirements of her revenue system for processing wedding orders as follows:

Whenever a customer comes in to place an order, a sales clerk enters a Sales Order directly into the

computer system. The sales order lists all of the floral inventory items the customer wishes to

purchase. The clerk then prints the sales order and gives a copy to the customer. If this is a new

customer, before entering the sales document, the clerk must enter the customer's basic information

such as name, address, etc. Additionally, credit for new customers must be approved by Sue. In

addition to transaction information, Sue tracks history information for each customer, showing all of

the flowers purchased by each customer, and quantities of each type. This allows her to target

market specials to each customer, and more quickly assess each customer's needs when they come

into the shop. This information is updated automatically by the computer system when the goods are

delivered to the customer.

When Sue completes delivery of the sales order, an accounts receivable clerk records the delivery on

a special screen. When delivery entry is completed, Sue prints the invoices and sends them to

customers. When customers send in their payments, a sales clerk records the cash receipts on a

special input screen. Sue takes the all of the cash receipts for a day and prepares a single deposit slip

form and makes the deposit. Sue later enters the deposit information from the paper form into the

computer.

Prepare an ERD diagram describing Sue's database. (State any assumptions you believe you have

to make in order to develop a complete diagram). Sue would like for you to consider that,

eventually, as new stores are opened, she will have store managers in each store that will perform

the tasks she now performs. As a result, the system should be planned to always store

information about the employee associated with transactions, whether that employee enters

information, performs a task (such as delivery) or formally authorizes the transaction.

Hints: (1) A particular sales order is always delivered and invoiced all at the same time.

Deliveries include information for only one Sales Order. (2) A single cash receipt may pay for

several deliveries. A single delivery may be paid for with several different cash receipts.