Applied Information Technology And Computer Science Vol. 3 No.

2 (2022) 835-853
© Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia Publisher’s Office

AITCS
Homepage: http://publisher.uthm.edu.my/periodicals/index.php/aitcs
e-ISSN :2773-5141

A Development of Inventory Management

System for Sin Guan Leong Grocery Store

Low Hao Xian1,Mazidah Mat Rejab 1*

Fakulti Sains Komputer dan Teknologi Maklumat,
1

Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia, Parit Raja, Batu Pahat, 86400, MALAYSIA

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30880/aitcs.2022.03.02.051
Received 07 August 2022; Accepted 25 October 2022; Available online 30 November 2022

Abstract: Inventory management is a very important and common system used by

every store in daily life to assist in managing their inventory. However, Sin Guan
Leong's Inventory management system is currently manual, and this system is
inconvenient for managing grocery stores. All product records are recorded by
employees in handwriting and such documents will cause problems during detection
and are difficult to keep. It will also cause human error due to misunderstandings
between employees. Therefore, an inventory management system for Sing Guan
Leong Grocery Store is needed by helping employees manage their groceries more
effectively and efficiently. This system is designed based on an object oriented
approach. The methodology used is the waterfall methodology. The user will be the
administrator and worker in grocery store. There are five modules in the system
namely login module, inventory module, cashier module, supplier module and report
generation module. Reports generated by the system are able to help retail store
owners determine which products are selling well so that owners can refill products
when the products run out. Through the system, users can record all product
movements in the system systematically and store them in the system. The system is
expected to provide various types of modules to help employees in retail stores more
easily manage products in stores. Lastly, functional requirements and user acceptance
testing results show that the system fulfills the requirement. There are some
improvements that can be done such as improving the security of the system.

Keywords: Grocery, Stock, Inventory, Inventory Management System, Barcode

1. Introduction
Sin Guan Leong Grocery is an old style Grocery store which has operated for many years. It is
built in 7, Hala Kalui, Seberang Jaya, 13700 Perai, Pulau Pinang. The Grocery operates every day and
there are thousands of products sold in the grocery. It is a grocery that sells many types of Goods such
as foods, drinks, and other daily necessities products.

*Corresponding author: mazidah@uthm.edu.my

2020 UTHM Publisher. All rights reserved.
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Low & M.Rejab, Applied Information Technology and Computer Science Vol. 3 No. 2 (2022) p. 835-853

The process of managing the product in the store is manually. In the Grocery Store, all the items or
products are managed manually by keeping the record of the product on papers, for example the product
name, quantity and price. It required the worker to make a store check if they wanted to know the
product remaining. Sometimes, the product quantity is not the same with the hand written records, it
will be more or less compared to the hand written document. The workers in the store are hard to track
the error on the papers if they do not do the store check. The duplicate information might be recorded
and cause other workers to confuse the record. There is the same situation for when the in stock, where
the product record will be added in the document, the unsystematic system will cause a lot of problems
that are hard to solve. If a product is sold from the grocery, there will be a record by the worker there
with hand written and make summaries at the end of the day using the hand written document. If a
product is sold from the grocery, there will be a record by the worker there with handwritten and made
summaries at the end of the day using the hand written document.
The duplicate or wrong information will cause an increase of workload to manage the product and
goods. Since the records from the document are wrong, hence the mistake might happen to the worker
and make a lot of problems such as wrong product name listed or wrong price listed.
Also, due to all the record documents being handwritten, the product is hard to track by the worker, it
might cause a different item quantity record compared to the real product quantity in the grocery. The
handwritten record for the shop is hard to keep, it needs a lot of places to keep and it will need the
worker a lot of time to get the information from the document. The whole progress of the currently
inventory management system are fully manual and request a lot of workload and time to complete,
The current management system used in the grocery is not convenient and not efficient, therefore a
systematic inventory management system must be proposed to the grocery to make it easy to manage
the product. Inventory management has become one of the key elements of the supply chain
management and can greatly affect the performance of a business [1].
This article is organized into five sections. The first part is an introduction describing the context of the
project. The second section describes the analysis of the relevant work. In the third section, the
methodology is explained. The implementation and testing of this system is described in the fourth
section. In the last section, a conclusion with some instructions for future employment is given.

2. Related Work
Three existing systems are investigated to examine the good features to be employed in the new system.
2.1 Inventory Management for Emart Grocery Shop

This is a web-based inventory management system developed by Chandra Sekhar et al [2]. The
stakeholders of the Inventory management system are the workers in the Emart. The worker in the
grocery shop can control the stock and know the remaining stock. Also, it can manage the details of
customer, inventory, payment, purchasing and supplier. The worker can authorize the user and group
of new incoming workers. All users must be logged in before using the features for the grocery system.
All users can manage customers such as add, view and delete. It is also able to manage vendors and
products which add, view and delete the information saved. It can also manage purchases and inventory.

2.2 Web Based Inventory Management System in LotteMart Solo Baru

LotteMart is an international company that started in South Korea and now the business has
grown rapidly. The company now has 48 stores with two different types of store, wholesale and retail
in Indonesia. Web based inventory management system in LotteMart Solo Baru is developed by
ADONIS PALLAS SUTANTO [3]. The system consists of few stakeholders, which is the

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administrator, manager and staff. The administrator has the highest access level which is able to access
all the features such as create, read, update and delete users and delete and edit recorded data. Managers
can access read transaction features and read general records. Staff can access the input goods arrival
and departure feature, correcting arrival and departure features.

2.3 Supermarket Management System Using Barcode Technology for Star Supermarket in Adama
City

This system is a web based system that manages the product in the supermarket. Supermarket
management system using barcode technology is a web based system that automates the supermarket’s
sales activity [4]. It enables for managing the stock details, maintaining the records of the sales done
for a specific period of time and monitoring the expiry status of the items from time to time. There will
be four stakeholders in this system which are the administrator, salesman, supermarket manager and
data encoder. The first function will enable the administrator to login by entering name and password.
Administrators are able to create new users into the system by inserting information such as username
and password. Also, the new user created can be modified and deleted by the admin. All users are able
to create, edit and delete an item/category in the system. The system is also able to print stock reports
and make summaries for the stock. If the user has a barcode scanner, the system is able to search the
product and display it to the user. After that the salesman can print the bill to customers.

2.4 Inventory management system for Sin Guan Leong Grocery Store

There are few modules in the system which are login module, inventory module, and cashier
module. For Login module, it allow user to log in, change password and log out from the system For
Inventory module, it allow user to view all the stock information and all invoice and all details. Also
can create, add, delete product, increase or decrease the product quantity, Product with low quantity
will be easily recognize by worker to refill the product. All the product can be filter by category. For
Cashier module, it can create an invoice or receipt during product sell, refund for the defect product,
and print the summary for the product sell. All the products can be tracked by using the barcode number
or the product name easily. For supplier module, it able user to add and edit the supplier name and other
details, add the quantity of the product, and view all stock details and summary for the supplier. Another
module will be report module, in this module, a report for the product can be show, such as product sale
report.

Table 1 summarized the features comparison of 3 related systems and the proposed
system. The proposed system has all the modules and features compared to the reference
system. Compared to the existing system, the proposed system is using the barcode technology
which enables users to enter products by using barcode scanning. Barcode, a printed series of
parallel bars or lines of varying width that is used for entering data into a computer system [5].

Table 1: System Comparison

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Features A B C D
Login Yes Yes Yes Yes
Manage Staff No Yes Yes Yes
Information
Add/Search Yes (manual Yes (manual Yes (Scan Yes (Scan
Inventory input) input) Barcode) Barcode)
Add Categories No No Yes Yes
Update Yes Yes Yes Yes
Inventory
Display No No No Yes
Inventory
Track Yes Yes Yes Yes
Inventory
product
Create Yes Yes Yes Yes
Purchase Order
Create Low No No Yes Yes
Product
Quantity
Reminder
Create Supplier Yes Yes Yes Yes
Record
Generate No No Yes Yes
Report
Usability Web-based Web-based Web-based Web-based
platform

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3. Methodology
This project begin from 1 September 2021 until 30 June 2022. The waterfall model is used in
the system development. Table 2 present the activities and the deliverable outcomes in each phases
during the software development life cycle in the project
Table 2: Software Development Activities and Deliverable for Phases in Waterfall Model

Phase Activity Deliverable

• Identify background, problem, • System proposal
objective, scope of the project. • Gantt Chart
Planning
• Determine cost and possible risk.
• Determine project schedule.
• System requirements
• UML use case diagram
• Interview stakeholder.
• UML use case specification
• Gather and analyze system
Analysis • Class diagram
requirements.
• To-be model
• Determine development tools.
• Requirements traceability
matrix (RTM)
• Design system architecture.
• Database Design
Design • Design database.
• Interface Design
• Design user interface.

Development • Coding and programming. • System Prototype

• Acceptance test from stakeholder. • Test Cases

Testing • Repeat analysis, design and • Test Report Results
implementation for improvement. • Finalized Prototype

3.1 Requirement Analysis

This phase collects all of the necessary requirements for an interactive system or device and
yields a requirements specification or document as its outcome. The requirement analysis helps in
development process. Functional Requirement define the basic system behavior of the system. Table 3
shows the system functional requirements.

Table 3: Functional Requirements based on System Functional Module

Module Description
Login Module • The system should allow user to login into the system using correct
username and password
• The system should allow to alert the user for any invalid input
• The system should give respond when user successful login.
• The system should allow user to change password.
• The system should allow user to log out.

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Inventory Module • The system should allow user to view all the product information.
• The system should allow user to create, add, modify, delete a product
information
• The system should allow user to filter the product by categories.
• The system should remind the user when product is running low.
Cashier Module • The system should allow user to generate an invoice and receipt when
product is sell
• The system should allow user to make a refund for a product.
Supplier Module • The system should allow user to create and modify the supplier
information
• The system should allow user to create, modify and delete a stock in
record.
Report Module • The system should allow user to get a monthly report for all product sell.
• The system should allow user to get a daily report for all product sell.
Table 3: (cont)

Non Functional requirement are also important during system development, it specify how the
system should do it. Not only that, it is also will affect the user experience. Table 4 shows the system
non-functional requirements.
Table 4: System Non-Functional Requirements

Requirements Description
Performance • The system should be usable at all times
Operational • The loading time required for a website is no more than 1 minute
Security • The system should be user friendly
• The system information should be secured
Cultural and • The system should be able to work on any web browser
political

The user requirement defines the expectation function should be in the system. Table 5 shows
the system user requirements.
Table 5: User Requirements

No. User Requirements

1. Users must be able to enter a valid username and password to login the system.
2. Users must be able to change the password of the system.
3. Users must be able to log out from the system.
4. Users must be alert by the system when invalid input.
5. Users must be able view all the product information.
6. Users must be able to create, add, modify and delete a product information

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Table 5: (cont)

7. Users must be able to filter the product by the categories.

8. Users must be able to generate the invoice and receipt when product sell.
9. Users must be able to do refund on product.
10. Users must be able to create, modify, and delete the supplier information.
11. Users must be able to create, modify and delete a stock in record.
12. Users must be able to view the daily and monthly product sell report.

3.2 System Analysis

Systems analysis is the process by which an individual (s) studies a system such that an
information system can be analyzed, modeled, and a logical alternative can be chosen [6]. A UML use-
case diagram shows the relationships among actors and use cases within a system [7]. Figure 1 shows
the Use Case Diagram for the system.

Figure 1: Use Case Diagram

According to Figure 1, the use case actor is the administrator and the worker which will interact
with the system. There are 5 use cases interacting with the 2 actors. The association line between the
actor and use case shows the relationship between the actor and use cases.

A class diagram is a static model that shows the classes and the relationships among classes
that remain constant in the system over time [8]. Figure 2 shows the class diagram for the proposed
system.
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Figure 2: Class Diagram

The implementation of the proposed Inventory management system will modify the business
model of the grocery store. The to-be model in Figure 3 presents the future inventory management
process for the grocery store.

Figure 3: To-be Model

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3.3 System Design

The system architecture use is client server architecture which the client is responsible for the
presentation logic, whereas the server is responsible for the data access logic and data storage [9]. Figure
4 show the database design of the proposed system.

Figure 4: System Architecture

Database design refers to the activities that focus on the design of the database structure that will be
used to store and manage end-user data [10]. Figure 5 shows the data schema of the proposed system.

Figure 5: Data Schema

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A user interface, as recently described, is a collection of techniques and mechanisms to interact

with something [11]. User Interface (UI) is the way to let human communicate and interact with a device
or a system. The user interface for the proposed system is shown in Figure 6, Figure 7, Figure 8 and
Figure 9.

Figure 6: Manage Inventory Page Figure 7: Manage Check In Page

Figure 8: Manage Refund Page Figure 9: Generate Report Page

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4. Results and Discussion

4.1 Implementation
The user login interface required the user to provide the correct user, password and role of the user to
successfully log into the system. If one of the information is not matched. The login will be failed and
the system will display an error message. Also, after login, the user can log out at any time by pressing
the log out button at the navigation bar. The user login interface of the system is shown in Figure 10.
The code segment for the login form is shown in Figure 11.

Figure 10: Login Interface

Figure 11: Code Segment for Login Interface

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In product module, user are able to create a new product and manage the inventory information. The user
can also preview all product information in a listed table. The interface of create new product form is shown in
the Figure 12. The code segment for create new product form is shown in Figure 13.

Figure 12: Create New Product Interface

Figure 13: Code Segment for Create New Product Interface

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In Cashier module, the user can create an invoice record for check out process and refund record
for any defect item return from customer. It also able to print a receipt for check out record. All for the
record created can be view, edit and delete by user and all for the action are record by the system. Figure
14 shown the check out record interface. The code segment for check out record Interface is shown in
Figure 15.

Figure 14: Check Out Record Interface

Figure 15: Code Segment for Check Out Record Interface

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Figure 16 shown the supplier stock-in interface. All record create by user will be display in this
interface. The user able to edit the stock-in details by pressing the action button. The code segment for
supplier stock-in interface is shown in Figure 17.

Figure 16: Supplier Stock-In Interface

Figure 17: Code Segment for Supplier Stock-In Interface

In generate report module, the user able to create and generate a report for the sales. The report
will be generated according the duration enter by user. The user can select the start and end date to
generate the report in the range selected. Also, the report created can be print by user. The generate

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report interface is shown in Figure 18. The user can print the report by pressing the print button. The
code segment for report list interface is shown in Figure 19.

Figure 18: Generate Report Interface

Figure 19: Code Segment for Generate Report Interface

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4.2 Testing
There will be two types of testing conducted which are the functional requirement testing and
the user acceptance testing. Functional Testing is to validate the system against the functional
requirements and specifications. The user acceptance testing is done with the expected user by using
Google form. The test cases were created based on the Requirement Traceability Matrix (RTM). The
RTM is shown in Table 6. This test case can help to trace the requirements of the system and make sure
all requirements are being tested and passed.
Table 6: Requirement Traceability Matrix

Test Result
Requirement Test Case ID Description
(Pass / Fail)
SRS_REQ_100 TEST_100 Login Module
The system should allow users to log in to
SRS_REQ_101 TEST_100_001 the system by providing a registered and Pass
valid username and password
The system should redirect the user to the
SRS_REQ_102 TEST_100_002 respective page after users successfully login Pass
or change password.
The system should display an error message
SRS_REQ_103 TEST_100_003 or a feedback to the users if login failed or Pass
change password failed
The system should allow users to log out
SRS_REQ_104 TEST_100_004 Pass
from the system.
The system should allow users
SRS_REQ_105 TEST_100_005 Pass
(Administrator) to register a new users
Test Result
SRS_REQ_200 TEST_200 Manage Inventory
(Pass / Fail)
The system should allow the user to scan a
SRS_REQ_201 TEST_200_001 barcode using a barcode scanner as input into Pass
the system.
The system should allow the user to create
SRS_REQ_202 TEST_200_002 Pass
and modify product information into system.
The system should allow user to preview all
SRS_REQ_203 TEST_200_003 Pass
product information.
The system should recognize the product
SRS_REQ_204 TEST_200_004 information by using the barcode number Pass
input by user.
The system should allow users to delete the
SRS_REQ_205 TEST_200_005 Pass
product from the system
The system should allow users to filter the
SRS_REQ_206 TEST_200_006 Pass
product according the product categories.
The system should allow user to set the
SRS_REQ_207 TEST_200_007 reminder to remind user when the product is Pass
running low amount.

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Table 6: (cont)

SRS_REQ_300 TEST_300 Cashier Module

SRS_REQ_301 TEST_300_001 The system should allow users to create check

Pass
out record for the product.
SRS_REQ_302 TEST_300_002 The system should allow users to create refund
Pass
record for a product.
SRS_REQ_303 TEST_300_003 The system should keep the record information
Pass
for the check out and refund progress.
SRS_REQ_304 TEST_300_004 The system should allow users to view the
Pass
check out and refund record.

SRS_REQ_400 TEST_400 Supplier Module Test Result

(Pass / Fail)
SRS_REQ_401 TEST_400_001 The system should allow users to create stock
Pass
in record for the product.
SRS_REQ_402 TEST_400_002 The system should allow users to create new
Pass
supplier.
SRS_REQ_403 TEST_400_003 The system should allow users to modify the
Pass
stock in record.
SRS_REQ_404 TEST_400_004 The system should allow users to delete the
Pass
stock in record.
SRS_REQ_405 TEST_400_005 The system should allow users to view the
Pass
stock in record.
SRS_REQ_406 TEST_400_006 The system should allow users to modify the
Pass
supplier information.
SRS_REQ_407 TEST_400_007 The system should keep the process history
Pass
record for the stock in.
SRS_REQ_500 TEST_500 Generate Report
SRS_REQ_501 TEST_500_001 The system should allow users to generate the
Pass
report on the daily or monthly check out data.
SRS_REQ_502 TEST_500_002 The system should allow users to print the
Pass
generated report

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The overall test cases for the functional requirement is shown in Table 7. There are total of 25
test cases are been test according each module respectively and the test results are stated in the table.
Table 7: Overall Test Case Result

Test Case ID Total Test Cases Total Passed

TEST_100 5 5

TEST_200 7 7

TEST_300 4 4

TEST_400 7 7

TEST_500 2 2

25 25

The user acceptance testing is done with the expected user by using Google form. The users
have been provided 3 aspects which are functionality of the system, usability of the system and the user
interface design of the system. Users can rate those aspects by the scale 1 to 5 which represents very
unsatisfied to very satisfied. There are 3 people who test the system. One of the users tested the system
as Administrator and two of the users tested the system as a worker. Figure 17 shows the overall user
satisfaction on each aspect of the proposed system.

Figure 17: Overall User Satisfaction on Proposed System

From Figure 5.31, all of the three users are very satisfied with the functionality of the system.
This shows that the functional requirements meet the needs of the grocery store and help improve the
management of inventory. For usability, two users are very stratified with the system usability, this
shows that the system is easy to use and user-friendly. The user interface design is very stratified from
two users, it shows that the user interface is simple, consistent and provides good informative feedback.

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5. Conclusion
The inventory system for the Sin Guan Leong Grocery Store was successfully developed. All of the
phases determined in methodology are successfully done in the expected schedule. The system meets
all the requirements and objectives. The user acceptance testing and functional testing are passed.The
purpose to develop the system is to provide a complete systematic and reliable system with less
possibility of any errors. It also makes the management for the grocer more easy and efficient. Even the
system has some limitations that can’t be achieved such as the system is not available when there is no
internet access but the suggestions are provided for further improvement.

Acknowledgment

The authors would like to thank the Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology,
Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia for its support.

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