Buffer station for document processing and balancing facilitation
AssigneeComputer Entry Systems Corporation
InventorsBrian Cunningham, Frank Hanou
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A paper document transport system utilizes detected information which is displayed to an operator to determine the balance between a batch of documents and a predetermined sum. Prior to encoding or further processing these documents, they are held in a mechanical buffer until a balance has been achieved and are subsequently fed out from the mechanical buffer to be further processed.
Claims12
An improved single station paper document transport system for verifying a balancing between the amount obtained from at least one remittance document associated with a transaction document and a transaction amount obtained from said transaction document, comprising:
- means for feeding said transaction document and each of said at least one remittance document one at a time through a transport means;
- means for detecting data contained on at least said transaction document wherein said data is in the form of at least one of optically and magnetically recognizable characters;
- means for storing said detecting data as said transaction amount;
- operator control means for inputting data indicating the amount of each of said at least one remittance document;
- means for indicating the achievement of a balance between said transaction amount and the total of said input data indicating the amount of each of said at least one remittance document;
- means for storing in succession said transaction document and each of said at least one remittance document fed one at a time through said transport means;
- means for releasing, one at a time all of said transaction and remittance documents from said document storage means in response to an output of said means for indicating a balance;
- means for processing said documents released from said document storage means wherein said processing means includes means for encoding each of said at least one remittance document with an amount equal to said amount from said each remittance document whereby said documents in said document storage means are not released from said document storage means and are not processed until all of said remittance and transaction documents have been stored in said document storage means and until after a balance has been obtained between said total of said input data and said transaction amount detected from said transaction document.
A method for verifying the balancing of a transaction by balancing the transaction amount obtained from transaction document with the amounts obtained from at least one remittance document associated with said transaction document, comprising the steps of:
- feeding said transaction document and each of said at least one remittance document one at a time through a transport system;
- detecting data contained on at least said transaction document by at least one of optical and magnetic detection of characters;
- storing said detected data as said transaction amount;
- inputting data indicating the amount of each of said at least one remittance document;
- detecting the achievement of a balance between said transaction amount and the total of said input data indicating the amount of each of said at least one remittance document;
- storing, in a document storage means, in succession, said transaction document and each of said at least one remittance document which has been fed one at a time in said transport system;
- releasing, one at a time, all of said transaction and remittance documents from said document storage means in response to the step of detecting the achievement of a balance between said transaction amount and said total of said input data;
- processing said documents which have been released including the step of encoding each of said at least one remittance document with an amount equal to said amount from a corresponding said each remittance document whereby said step of releasing said documents is inhibited and said step of processing said documents is inhibited until all of said remittance documents and said transaction document have been stored in said document storage means and until after a balance has been obtained between said total of said input data and said transaction amount detected from said transaction document.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.