Auditing of charges in an integrated prevalidation and ordering system

Abstract

Disclosed is a system that prevalidates service orders that are placed by an inter exchange carrier with a local exchange carrier for connection of the inter exchange carrier with a business customer. An integrated prevalidation system and service order system is disclosed in which prevalidation requests are performed using the data that is entered for the service order. Prevalidation responses are then used to ensure that the order will be correct when submitted, thereby avoiding the necessity for expensive supplemental orders. Further, the present invention allows for stand alone prevalidation requests which enable a provisioner to determine availability of circuits, and to determine location information and equipment identification directly from the LEC databases. Further, the present invention is capable of reconciling the database of the inter exchange carrier with the database of the LEC to avoid submission of incorrect service orders. Further, auditing reports can be generated whenever a prevalidation response has been accepted and a service order acknowledgment has rejected the service order. These reports can be used to audit and obtain credit for the necessary supplemental orders which may follow. Also, prevalidation requests are reserved to prevent submission of conflicting service orders.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.