Cash receipts procedures are natural batch systems. Unlike sales transactions, which tend
to occur continuously throughout the day, cash receipts are discrete events. Checks and
remittance advices arrive from the postal service in batches. Likewise, the deposit of cash
receipts in the bank usually happens as a single event at the end of the business day.
Because of these characteristics, many firms see no significant benefit from investing in
costly real-time cash procedures.
The cash receipts system in Figure 9.4 uses direct access files and batch processing.
The technology employed in this example is used to automate traditional procedures.
The following discussion outlines the main points of this system.