Accounting system for use with document processing system

Abstract

There is provided an accounting system for a document processing system which executes one or more jobs with multiple document processing facilities. One of the jobs is identified by a unique identifier and has its origin in a document in a hardcopy or electronic form. A first portion of the one job is processed with a first one of the multiple document processing facilities, in accordance with a first set of control instructions, to result in a first accountable event characterized by a first set of one or more attribute values, and a second portion of the one job is processed with a second one of the multiple document processing facilities, in accordance with a second set of control instructions to result in a second accountable event characterized by a second set of one or more attribute values. The accounting system includes an account log for storing a first set of information and a second set of information, the first and second sets of information respectively including the first and second sets of one or more attribute values, and the first and second sets of information being associated with one another by reference to the unique identifier. The accounting further includes an account log manager, communicating with the first and second ones of the multiple document processing facilities, for receiving the first and second sets of information from the first and second ones of the multiple document processing facilities to store the first and second sets of information in the account log as a virtually integrated unit.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.