Method and system for building audit rule sets for electronic auditing of documents

• US 20060080599A1
• Filed: 09/26/2005
• Published: 04/13/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 09/24/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Document Services, Inc (Reynolds & Reynolds Company)
• Original Assignee: Encomia, L.P. (Reynolds & Reynolds Company)
• Inventors: Dubinsky, Andrew M.
• Granted Patent: US 8,209,248 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/255
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/186 Templates
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/226 Validation
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/00 Finance; Insurance; Tax strategies; Processing of corporate or income taxes

Abstract

A software-based method and system is described for building audit rule sets for auditing electronic documents. The method and system include an editor, schemas, a processing engine, and documents or a document creation engine. The system and method give users a visual interface for building audit rule sets to examine electronic documents for compliance with legal and regulatory requirements.

Claims

1. A method for creating documents with variable source data and testing the documents for compliance with applicable rules, the method comprising:

populating a document having static data with the variable source data;

creating an audit rule-set using preconfigured audit rules; and

testing the document using the audit rule-set to determine whether the document complies with the applicable rules.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising gathering legal rules and provider requirements, the legal rules and provider requirements used to construct the preconfigured audit rules.

3. The method of claim 1 further comprising creating the document before populating the document with the source data.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the document is obtained from an existing source.

5. The method of claim 1 further comprising creating the source data before populating the document with the source data.

6. The method of claim 1 further comprising obtaining the source data from an existing source before populating the document with the source data.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein the audit rule-set includes parent child-dependencies.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein the audit rule-set is created by dragging and dropping the preconfigured audit rules from a rule pane into a editor pane.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein the audit rules that make up the audit rule-set include symbols indicating the appropriate results.

10. The method of clam 1 wherein the audit rule-set is presented visually to a user in a hierarchical format showing the execution order of the audit rules forming the audit rule-set.

11. A system for creating documents with variable source data and testing the documents for compliance with applicable rules, the method comprising:

a rule pane holding one or more preconfigured rules usable in auditing the documents;

a rule-set editor allowing a user to assemble audit rule-sets from the rules in the rule plane, the rule-set editor operable to create relationships between each rule in response to user commands; and

a properties pane that includes descriptions of each rule in the rules pane.

12. The system of claim 11 wherein the user drags and drops rules from the rules pane into the rule-set editor to assemble the audit rule-set.

13. The system of claim 11 wherein the properties pane includes both general information and rule specific information.

14. The system of claim 11 wherein the rules in the audit rule-set have associated symbols indicating expected results.

15. The system of claim 11 further comprising document editor operable to create documents capable of being tested for compliance.

16. The system of claim 15 further comprising a audit processing engine operable to audit the document in the document editor against the audit rule-set.

17. The system of claim 16 wherein the audit processing engine is embedded in the document editor.

18. The system of claim 11 wherein the document contain both static legal text and variable data specific to a legal contract.

19. The system of claim 18 wherein the document is a mortgage document.

20. The system of claim 18 wherein the document uses extensible markup language.