US 8,650,119 B2 · Order-resource fulfillment and management system and approach

Abstract

Historical data is used to manage and authorize payment for merchant offerings for transactions among a plurality of transaction parties. According to an example embodiment of the present invention, invoiced item quantities are processed using historical fulfilled and billed quantities of each item. If invoiced item quantities involved items that have been fulfilled but not billed, payment for the invoiced items is authorized. If some or all of the invoiced items have not been fulfilled or have been previously billed, payment authorization is withheld for at least the portion of unfulfilled or previously billed (and paid) invoiced items. With this approach, historical information relative to order fulfillment and payment status is used to automatically process invoices (e.g., audit the invoices for payment).

Claims23

Dependent claims

A system for managing payment resources for a plurality of transactions, the system comprising:

a computer circuit programmed to:
associate an invoice with a given transaction in the plurality of transactions, the transactions involving merchant offerings among parties including buyers and sellers, different ones of the transactions involving different sets of buyers and sellers;
generate, for each ordered item listed on the invoice, electronic payment authorization data for the ordered item in response to determining at the computer circuit that a billed quantity of the ordered item is less than or equal to a difference between a historical fulfillment quantity for the ordered item and a historical billed quantity for the ordered item, the historical fulfillment quantity for the ordered item and the historical billed quantity for the ordered item indicated in data for the given transaction stored in a database, and
update, in the database, the historical billed quantities for the ordered items listed on the invoice as a function of the billed quantities of the ordered items.

1 more element

A method for automatically managing payment resources for a plurality of transactions, the method comprising:

associating, by a computer-based circuit, an invoice with a particular transaction as a function of data in the invoice and stored transaction-profile information, the invoice listing quantities of ordered items;
and
generating, by the computer-based circuit, electronic payment authorization data as a function of historical fulfilled quantities for the ordered items and historical billed quantities for the ordered items,
the historical fulfillment quantities for the ordered items indicating quantities of the ordered items that have been fulfilled by a seller for the transaction,
the historical billed quantities for the ordered items being indicative of quantities of the ordered items that have been previously billed, and
the electronic payment authorization data authorizing a financial institution to facilitate a payment from a buyer involved in the transaction to the seller, the payment is for quantities of the ordered items that do not exceed a difference between the historical fulfillment quantities for the ordered items and the historical billed quantities for the ordered items.

3 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Order-resource fulfillment and management system and approach

Life of this patent

Order-resource fulfillment and management system and approach

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims23