Method and apparatus for phone tracking with deferred remote billing

An apparatus of automatically accounting for call activities on a telephone handset, comprising:

• means for automatically associating use of the telephone handset with a first user;
• means for allowing the first user to perform a call through use of the telephone handset without providing billing information relating to the call;
• means for automatically collecting data concerning the nature of the call;
• means for automatically determining a cost for making the call, defined as unbilled call cost information;
• means for the communicating unbilled call cost information related to the cost of making the telephone call automatically to at least one computer associated with the first user, through a network, the at least one computer and telephone handset being without restriction with respect to physical proximity to each other;
• and
• means for prompting a billing user who may or may not be the first user to input billing data into a billing database, which billing data is related relating to the unbilled call cost information which was automatically communicated to the at least one computer associated with the first user and which automatically communicated cost information is made available at least in part to the billing user for input of the billing data.

A computer readable medium containing instructions for automatically accounting for activities in a network comprising a telephone handset and a computer, the instructions comprising:

• automatically associating the telephone handset with a first user;
• automatically collecting data concerning the nature of a telephone call;
• automatically determining a cost for making the call, defined as unbilled call cost information;
• communicating the unbilled call cost information related to the cost of making the telephone call automatically to at least one computer associated with the first user through a network, the at least one computer and telephone handset being without restriction with respect to physical proximity to each other;
• and
• prompting a billing user who may or may not be the first user to, provide accounting information for input into a billing database from at least one computer associated with the first user for the call made by the first user after the call is completed.