Order-resource fulfillment and management system and approach
First Claim
1. A transaction-processing system for managing payment resources for a plurality of transactions involving merchant offerings among parties including buyers and sellers, different ones of the plurality of transactions involving different sets of buyer and seller parties, the system comprising:
- a data storage arrangement configured, for each of the plurality of transactions, to store data characterizing historical fulfillment quantities and historical billed quantities of ordered items that have been received; and
a computer arrangement configured and programmed, for each ordered item listed on an invoice for each of the plurality of transactions, toassociate the invoice with one of the plurality of transactions,in response to a difference between a quantity of ordered item for which payment is requested on the invoice and the historical data for the ordered item in the data storage arrangement,using the difference as a basis to generate electronic pre-payment reconciliation data for each ordered item listed on the invoice, and thereby generating the reconciliation data based on the quantity of the ordered item listed on the invoice and the difference, andupdate historical billed quantities for the ordered item as characterized in the data stored in the data storage arrangement as a function of the quantity of the ordered item in the invoice.
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Accused Products
Abstract
Historical data is used to manage and authorize payment for merchant offerings for transactions among a plurality of transaction parties. According to an example embodiment of the present invention, invoiced item quantities are processed using historical fulfilled and billed quantities of each item. If invoiced item quantities involved items that have been fulfilled but not billed, payment for the invoiced items is authorized. If some or all of the invoiced items have not been fulfilled or have been previously billed, payment authorization is withheld for at least the portion of unfulfilled or previously billed (and paid) invoiced items. With this approach, historical information relative to order fulfillment and payment status is used to automatically process invoices (e.g., audit the invoices for payment).
166 Citations
28 Claims
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1. A transaction-processing system for managing payment resources for a plurality of transactions involving merchant offerings among parties including buyers and sellers, different ones of the plurality of transactions involving different sets of buyer and seller parties, the system comprising:
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a data storage arrangement configured, for each of the plurality of transactions, to store data characterizing historical fulfillment quantities and historical billed quantities of ordered items that have been received; and a computer arrangement configured and programmed, for each ordered item listed on an invoice for each of the plurality of transactions, to associate the invoice with one of the plurality of transactions, in response to a difference between a quantity of ordered item for which payment is requested on the invoice and the historical data for the ordered item in the data storage arrangement, using the difference as a basis to generate electronic pre-payment reconciliation data for each ordered item listed on the invoice, and thereby generating the reconciliation data based on the quantity of the ordered item listed on the invoice and the difference, and update historical billed quantities for the ordered item as characterized in the data stored in the data storage arrangement as a function of the quantity of the ordered item in the invoice. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22)
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23. A method for automatically managing payment resources for a plurality of transactions involving merchant offerings among parties including buyers and sellers, the method comprising:
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operating a computer processor, for each of the plurality of transactions, to perform the steps of associate invoice data with a particular one of the transactions as a function of data in the invoice and stored transaction-profile information; and in response to a difference between a quantity of ordered item for which payment is requested on the invoice and the historical data for the ordered item in the data storage arrangement, using the difference as a basis to generate electronic pre-payment reconciliation data for authorizing payment from a buyer to a seller for seller-invoiced item quantities based on fulfilled quantity data indicating items that have been fulfilled by the seller for the transaction, and historical data for the item, the historical data being indicative of a portion of the total item quantity that has been previously-billed. - View Dependent Claims (24, 25, 26, 27)
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28. A method for managing payment resources for a plurality of transactions involving merchant offerings among parties including buyers and sellers, different ones of the plurality of transactions involving different sets of buyer and seller parties, the method comprising:
operating a computer processor to perform the steps of, for each of the plurality of transactions, storing historical data characterizing historical fulfillment quantities and historical billed quantities of ordered items, the historical fulfillment quantities representing a quantity of the ordered items that have been received; and for each of the ordered items listed on an invoice for each of the plurality of transactions, associating the invoice with one of the plurality of transactions; in response to a difference between a quantity of ordered item for which payment is requested on the invoice and the historical data for the ordered item, using the difference as a basis to generate electronic pre-payment reconciliation data for each ordered item listed on the invoice, and thereby generating the reconciliation data based on the quantity of the ordered item listed on the invoice and the difference, and updating historical billed quantities for the ordered item as characterized in the data stored in the data storage arrangement as a function of the quantity of the ordered item in the invoice.
Specification