Accounting Information Systems Project

Fall 2007

Your team has been requested to select and design a new accounting information system for a new restaurant business. Over the last five years, we have developed and run several new dining concepts in California, Texas and Arizona. These companies were recently sold for $23 million dollars, which we plan to reinvest in a number of new concepts in Colorado and Illinois.

One of the concepts we plan to develop involves two restaurants in one. On one side is a dinner only, adult only restaurant which will serve Continental cuisine; while the other side will be for kids only and will include an arcade, fun kids fare, a gym with slides, trampolines, etc. So Mom and Dad can eat while the kids play. We also plan to develop other concepts for testing purposes. As these concepts prove successful, we plan on selling them to other companies for further expansion. These monies will be re-invested into future new concepts and used to pay back our investors.

We have defined the following prioritized, measurable objectives for our business. By achieving these, we will be successful.

Develop and sell one new concept each year for the next five years with an ROI of > 40% for each transaction.
Understand our overall financial situation, so investment/sales decisions can be made within a few days of being presented to management.
Develop concepts that require less than $200,000 in capital investment to open each restaurant.
Develop concepts that can be proven with three or fewer restaurants. (Proven means that each restaurant generates at least $50,000 quarterly in after tax profit)

Your responsibilities include the following:

Due to management no later than October 19th:

Identify system requirements and select an accounting information system for use by the new business, while making sure to answer the following questions at a minimum:
Why is this system the best choice?
What additional value does the business receive by not keeping their books manually?
How will this system help the business? (Give one example)
Identify and design appropriate management reports, including a quarterly report.
Identify and design source documents necessary to collect the required system information.

Due to management no later than December 14th:

Design a data model for the business.
Design and implement the chart(s) of accounts for the business.
Design the business process for the revenue cycle, including internal controls, making sure to answer the following questions:
What risks are mitigated by your process design?
How does this process improve the revenue cycle?
Identify and document standard accounting transactions necessary to operate the business for the revenue and expenditures cycles.
Match to previous source documents and reports from your Oct 15th deliverables.
Identify and document accounting transactions necessary to close the books each period based upon your entity structure design.
Identify and document transactions necessary to close any portion or all of the business.
What price would you require to be willing to sell the business?
Provide support for your key decisions so management understands how you came to them. Make sure to note any assumptions you made as part of this project.