Courier company computerisation (CCC) software

• A courier company wishes to computerise various book keeping activities associated with its
daily operation. The courier company has branches in most important towns in India. It is
proposed that the different branch offices be equipped with a computer and printer each. The
developed software would be deployed on the computer at each branch office and linked though
the Internet. The other details are as follows:
•At each of its branch office and other retail outlets, the courier company receives consignments
of various weights and sizes (measured in cubic meters). The charges are at present Rs. 5,000 per
cubic meter for distances up to 500 km. For larger distances, 10 per cent additional charge is
levied for every 100 km or part thereof. For packets weighing more than 100 kg per cubic meter,
an additional 10 per cent levy is charged for every 20 kg/cubic meter. For small articles and
letters, Rs. 50 per 100 gms is charged. At present, only those packets having destination to a city
where a branch office is located is accepted. When a customer tries to book a consignment at any
of the retail points or branch offices, the details of the consignment such as its volume,
weight, destination address, sender address, etc. are entered into the computer by the
sales clerk. The computer would compute the charges for the consignment and print a bill
indicating a unique id indicating the consignment number, which is assigned to the
consignment. A customer should be able to track the delivery status of the consignment on-line
by using the unique id. The courier company owns a number of trucks, which are used for
transporting consignments between branch offices. When the volume of consignments for any
particular destination (branch office) becomes 500 cubic meters, the system should
automatically allot the next available truck that is present at the branch office. Since, no
consignment should get unduly delayed, whenever a consignment cannot be dispatched to its
destination within 3 days of its receipt, it should automatically be forwarded to any branch
office that is closer to the destination. When a truck is allocated for dispatch of consignments
to a branch office, the computer system should print the details of the consignment number,
volume, sender’s name and address, and the receiver’s name and address. This print out is to be
carried by the truck driver for monitoring and excise clearance purposes. When a truck reaches
a branch office, its arrival status is updated. A truck stays with the branch office until the branch
office has enough cargo to load the truck to at least 80 per cent of its capacity. The transport office
at the branch office can enter the fuel and repair charges for a truck. The regular expenses of
the courier company include staff salaries, rental charges for the branch offices, and truck
maintenance charges. The company judiciously uses its profits to set up new branch offices and
to buy additional trucks. The software should maintain the details of each employee such as
his name, address, telephone number, basic pay, and other allowances. It should help the
account manager at each branch office to generate the pay slip of all the employees every
month and automatically credit the salaries to their respective bank accounts. All payments
and receipts are entered into the system. A consolidated profit-loss account (taking all the
branches and the entire operation into account) is expected to be prepared by the system. The
manager should be able to view branch wise revenue generated, consignments handled,
expenses, etc. The manager should be able to view the status of different trucks at any time,
e.g. the branch office at which it is waiting, or the two branch offices between which it is
currently transporting consignments. The manager should be able to view truck usage
(overall as well as for individual trucks) over a given period of time. The truck usage is to be
given in terms of load factor (average capacity utilisation) and number of kilometres covered over
the given period. The manager of the courier company can query the status of any particular
consignment and the details of volume of consignments transported between any two
branches and the corresponding revenue generated. The manager should be able to view the
average waiting period for the consignments over a given period of time (day, month, or year)
and that for various source destination pairs. This statistic is important for the manager, since he
normally orders new trucks when the average waiting period for consignments becomes high due
to non-availability of trucks. Also, the manager would like to see the average idle times of trucks
over a given period time for future planning. The courier company would like the software to be
modular and highly configurable, so that it can sell copies of the software to other courier
companies in the country.