System and method for associating financial transaction data with a user's project data

• US 7,949,579 B2
• Filed: 12/07/2007
• Issued: 05/24/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 12/07/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: JP Morgan Chase Bank, N.A. (JP Morgan Chase & Co)
• Original Assignee: JP Morgan Chase Bank, N.A. (JP Morgan Chase & Co)
• Inventors: Keld, Marcia
• Primary Examiner(s): Gart; Matthew S
• Assistant Examiner(s): Goyea; Olusegun
• Application Number:
  US11/952,457
• Publication Number:
  US 20090150265A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,264 Days
• Field of Search: 705/36.R, 705/39, 705/42, 705/66, 705/75, 705/41, 705/30, 705/26, 705/16, 705/10, 705/23, 705/67, 705/5, 705/35, 705/19, 705/31, 235/379, 442/43, 442/59, 715/744, 713/186, 704/9, 707/999.01, 707/999.003
• US Class Current: 705/30
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/00 Payment architectures, schemes or protocols apparatus for performing or posting payment transactions G07F7/08, G07F19/00; electronic cash registers G07G1/12
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/02 involving a neutral party, e.g. certification authority, notary or trusted third party [TTP]
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/10 specially adapted for electronic funds transfer [EFT] systems; specially adapted for home banking systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/105 involving programming of a portable memory device, e.g. IC cards, "electronic purses"
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/108 Remote banking, e.g. home banking
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/14 specially adapted for billing systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/20 Point-of-sale [POS] network systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/3674 involving authentication
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0601 Electronic shopping [e-shopping]
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/00 Finance; Insurance; Tax strategies; Processing of corporate or income taxes
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/02 Banking, e.g. interest calculation or account maintenance credit or loans G06Q40/03
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/10 Tax strategies
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/12 Accounting
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/123 Tax preparation or submission

Abstract

This invention relates to an expense reporting system for viewing and manipulating a user'"'"'s financial transaction data and a method for associating financial transaction data with a user'"'"'s project data. The system includes a user'"'"'s financial transaction data hosted in a data storage unit, addressable on a network, and accessible by a remote user on a user interface unit having a user input means and a display; and an expense reporting module having a graphical user interface (GUI) that allows a user to define project category data and associate representations of the user'"'"'s financial data with the user-defined project category data.

Claims

1. A web-based expense reporting system, comprising:

a processor and a data storage unit connected to the processor for storing credit card transaction data, wherein the credit card transaction data include line item transaction data for identifying items within each transaction and one or more of;

purchase data, product data, product quantity data, purchase date data, purchase price data, vendor name data, vendor part number data, product name data, stock keeping unit (SKU) number data, tax data, discount data, receipt number data, universal product code data, barcode data, fee data, interest rate data, interest data, balance data, debit card data, check data, line of credit access card data, line of credit transaction card data, and balance transfer data;

wherein the processor is addressable by at least one user interface unit via the internet to allow the processor to exchange the credit card transaction data with the at least one user interface unit;

an expense reporting module including a graphical user interface (GUI) for displaying representations of a user'"'"'s credit card transaction data on a display connected to the at least one user interface unit, the module comprising;

a transaction retrieval component operable to access the user'"'"'s credit card transaction data and generate representations thereof;

a category generation engine operable to generate user-defined project category data and representations thereof;

a code generation component operable to generate a user-defined code identifier;

a code association component operable to link user-defined project category data to a user-defined code identifier;

a transaction categorization engine operable to associate the user'"'"'s credit card transaction data with the user-defined project category data, the transaction categorization engine being further operable to associate a desired portion or percentage of the user'"'"'s credit card transaction data for a single transaction with a selected one of the user-defined project category data representations, and optionally, dis-associate the user'"'"'s credit card transaction data representations from the associated user-defined project category representations, the desired portion or percentage represented by the line item transaction data;

a GUI generation engine operable to express a graphical arrangement of the selected ones of the user'"'"'s credit card transaction representations associated with the one or more user-defined project category data representations, the GUI generation engine representing the user'"'"'s credit card transaction data with a first set of virtual object(s) and representing the user-defined project category data with a second set of virtual object(s);

a data record generation engine operable to convert the graphical arrangement into a data record, wherein the data record is in a form suitable for at least one of;

review, storage, modification, analysis, and exportation; and

a data record manipulation component for enabling a user to at least one of;

review a data record, modify a data record, store a data record, analyze a data record, and export a data record, wherein the data record manipulation component at least enables the user to manually designate a fraction of a single transaction to be associated or dis-associated with a selected one of the user-defined project category data representations by clicking-and-dragging or dragging-and-dropping one of said first set of virtual object(s) in relation to one of said second set of virtual object(s) or by clicking-and-dragging or dragging-and-dropping one of said second set of virtual object(s) in relation to one of said first set of virtual object(s).

2. The system of claim 1, further comprising a bar code generation component operable to generate a bar code representing the user-defined code identifier.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the bar code is readable at a point of service to link credit card transaction data to the user-defined code identifier.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein the transaction categorization engine is further operable to automatically associate a user'"'"'s financial transaction data linked to the user-defined code identifier with user-defined project category data linked to a corresponding user-defined code identifier.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the credit card transaction data comprises line-item data within a recorded transaction, the line-item data comprising product identifying data, such that multiple products are identified within the recorded transaction and the transaction categorization engine is operable to associate each product identified by the product identifying data with at least one user-defined project category.

6. The system of claim 3, wherein the GUI generation engine is further operable to express a graphical arrangement of representations of the user-defined project category data linked to the user-defined code identifier and associated with representations of a user'"'"'s financial transaction data linked to the user-defined code identifier.

7. The system of claim 1, further comprising a data record manipulation component operable to generate a receipt including data from the data record.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein the transaction categorization engine is further operable to dis-associate selected ones of the user'"'"'s financial transaction representations associated with one or more of the user-defined project category representations.

9. A web-based expense reporting system, comprising:

a processor and a data storage unit connected to the processor for storing credit card transaction data, wherein the credit card transaction data comprises line-item data within a recorded transaction, the line-item data comprising product identifying data, such that multiple products are identified within the recorded transaction;

wherein the processor is addressable by at least one user interface unit via a network to allow the processor to exchange the credit card transaction data with the at least one user interface unit;

an expense reporting module including a graphical user interface (GUI) for displaying representations of a user'"'"'s credit card transaction data on a display connected to the at least one user interface unit, the module comprising;

a transaction retrieval component operable to access the user'"'"'s credit card transaction data and generate credit card transaction data representations;

a category generation engine operable to generate user-defined project category data and project category representations;

a code generation component operable to generate a user-defined code identifier;

a code association component operable to link user-defined project category data to a particular user-defined code identifier;

a transaction categorization engine operable to associate the user'"'"'s credit card transaction data with the user-defined project category data, the transaction categorization engine being further operable to implement the line item data to associate each of the multiple products within the recorded transaction and identified by the product identifying data with a corresponding user-defined project category;

a GUI generation engine operable to express a graphical arrangement of the selected ones of the user'"'"'s credit card transaction representations associated with the one or more user-defined project category representations, the GUI generation engine representing the user'"'"'s credit card transaction data with a first set of virtual object(s) and representing the user-defined project category data with a second set of virtual object(s);

a data record generation engine operable to convert the graphical arrangement into a data record, wherein the data record is in a form suitable for at least one of;

review, storage, modification, analysis, and exportation; and

a data record manipulation component for enabling a user to at least one of;

review a data record, modify a data record, store a data record, analyze a data record, and export a data record, wherein the data record manipulation component at least enables the user to manually designate a fraction of a single transaction to be associated or dis-associated with one or more user-defined project category data representations by clicking-and-dragging or dragging-and-dropping one of said first set of virtual object(s) in relation to one of said second set of virtual object(s) or by clicking-and-dragging or dragging-and-dropping one of said second set of virtual object(s) in relation to one of said first set of virtual object(s).