GR1 - Task analysis

User analysis

User Classes

A. Business Traveler Business Users want to avoid the hassle of managing and saving receipts. They need information entered on their phone to integrate seamlessly with their office expense reporting platform. One consultant we interviewed said his company had implemented a system that interfaced with his corporate card and imported the information to the expense report, eliminating his need to report any credit expenses. However, that system only works for expenses paid using the corporate card, and according to others we interviewed, most companies do not have a similar system.

Clive is a professorial salesman. He is 32 and travels five days a week every week; when he’s not on the road he’s not making money. He values the little time he has at home with his wife and young daughter.

B. Business Administrator Business Administrators will be able to view aggregate reports from all of the users in their organization. Aggregate reports will be available, this may or may not be available in the mobile interface. According to one administrative assistant, handling employees' expense report is very time consuming. She needs to collect the receipt, time, date and purpose of each expense and physically deliver it to the accounting department. Sometimes an employee would omit a piece of information, make a mistake or forget to attach a receipt, and she will contact that employee asking for additional information or clarifications. When a receipt is missing, she will contact the business that issued the receipt and request a copy.

Barbara is in her late twenties and runs finances for a group of approximately 40 travelling professionals. She is stretched thin by her duties at work and will take anything that makes life simpler.

Task analysis

Capture Receipt
Goal:  Scan and save an image as a receipt
Frequency: High ( several times a day )
Preconditions: Must have a receipt
Subtasks: Capture picture of a receipt, Verify receipt was captured correctly

Classify Receipt
Goal: Classify a receipt into one of an arbitrary number of expense categories
Frequency: High ( done as you receive receipts ) / Low ( batched to categorize all receipts on the plane )
Preconditions: Expense Categories Exist, Receipt Exists, Receipt belongs to only one expense category
Subtasks: View Receipt, Select one expense category, Verify Expense Category, Enter Total Amount, Enter Receipt Title, Select account to bill to

View Total Spend Patterns
Goal: View a visualization of spend patterns by budget and expense type
Frequency: Rare (weekly)
Preconditions: Receipts have already been entered and classified.
Subtasks: Display Dashbaord, Select Specific Budget and display it, Select specific expense category and display it, Select both specific budget and expense category and display the intersection.

Domain analysis

Entities

• Receipt
• Account
• Purchase
• Traveler
• Trip
• Business Administrator
• Spending Report
• System Administrator

Entity-Relationship Diagram

Diagram Details

From the diagram above, system administrators handle the maintenance and logistics of the interface.  They also create and manage (to some degree) user accounts and delegate permissions to users depending on their job functions.  Travelers can use their account to scan in receipts from the purchases made during a trip.  Once a receipt is scanned in, purchase details, such as date and time, store name, expense categories, and spending total, will be parsed and recorded in the backend system.  Business administrators use their account to watch the spending of the travelers that they manage.  Spending reports are provided to satisfy this function.  Assuming a prototypical sales company, there could be 50 system administrators watching over the system, 2,000 salespeople who are the travelers of the company, and 250 business administrators who manage these salespeople.  Each traveler has a single account.  The same applies for business administrators.  Some other assumptions that are made in the diagram:

• The numbers are based on an annual average.  Thus, in a given year, a traveler will make 60 trips on average, with 15 purchases per trip on average and exactly 1 receipt per purchase.
• Business administrators will expect to see a monthly report of spending.  This could vary from quarterly to weekly reports, depending on the granularity that the administrator would like to achieve.
• Business administrators could also enter their own receipts, but these could call for a separate traveler account for the administrator.