Patent Application
20080228647
The present invention relates to a method and computer-readable medium for managing an account balance. More specifically, the present invention relates to a method and computer-readable medium for allowing a user to manage an account balance remotely, e.g., via the Internet, by triggering a database function.
Currently, users must either call a company's customer service representative and provide payment information over the telephone or send payments via mail to make payments on their account balances. The user tells a customer service personnel which invoices and how much to pay. The customer service personnel then contacts an external payment service organization to process the payment and enters the payment information into the company's accounting system. This is a labor intensive process, requiring a significant amount of time and numbers of employees for the company to process the payments.
The present invention allows an authorized user to access a company's account balance database through an Internet web page for review and payment processing, i.e., a “self-service” process for users to make payments to their accounts. By selecting specific invoices and entering credit card or other payment information, the authorized user can make payments to his account.
According to the present invention, the payment transaction is processed without intervention by the company, and the payment is recorded in both the accounts receivable detail records and the company's financial information. The Internet web page may be used to trigger execution of an accounting software program to accomplish the payment and update of records.
Other objects, advantages, and novel features of the present invention will become apparent from the following detailed description of the invention when considered in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.
Once logged into the account database system 120, the user may view his account(s) via web pages and choose to make a payment of an account balance. The account database system 120 may retrieve the user's open invoices from an accounting database in step 203. In step 204, invoices that have been previously paid, but have not completed processing in the account system, are retrieved. In step 205, the invoices retrieved in step 204 are removed from the list of open invoices that were retrieved in step 203, thereby removing any invoices that may have already been paid, but have not completed processing due to processing time and/or potential processing delays. In step 205, the list of open invoices that have not already been paid may be displayed to the user via web page. The web page may display invoice numbers, invoice dates, due dates, invoice amounts and amounts due, for example. The user selects one or more of the open invoices on which to make a payment, for example, by selecting a check box on the display via the user interface. The user's invoice selection is received in step 206.
The account database system 120 receives payment information from the user in step 207 for making a payment to the selected invoice. The payment information may be credit card information, e.g., card number, expiration date, etc. In step 208, a payment batch header record is written to a processing server data store, which can be a database on the web server. A batch ID may also be written to the processing server data store in step 208. In step 209, batch detail records are written to the processing server data store for the selected invoice(s). A batch detail record may be created for each invoice selected by the user.
In step 210, the payment information is processed. The processing of the payment information may include sending the payment information to an external payment service, e.g., Verisign Payment Services, for processing. In step 211, the batch header record is updated with the payment information for the payment transaction(s).
In step 212, it is determined whether the payment was successfully processed. If the payment processing was not successful, an error message may be outputted to the user in step 213 to inform the user that the payment could not be processed. If the payment was successfully processed, authorization and settlement data received from the external payment service, e.g., settlement number and settlement amount, may be written by the processing server to a payment file of the user in step 214. The payment file may be an accounting system electronic payment table, for example. In step 215, a record of the payment transaction may be written to an account transactions file in the account database system 120 of the service provider. For example, the transaction may be recorded in a header file and a detail file for accounts receivable and a general ledger system. The header file and the detail file may include, for example, the following information:
Header File
User ID
Payment/Item Number
Transaction Type
Address Number
Pay Status
Batch Number
Check/Item Date
G/1 Date
Settlement Number
Settlement Amount
Date Updated
Time Last Updated
Variable Return Data
Description
Detail File
Payment/Item Number
Transaction Type
Document Number
Document Type
Pay Item
Company
Invoice Date
Payment Terms
Mode
Gross Amount
Pay Status
Date Updated
Time Last Updated
In step 216, it is determined whether the header and detail information of the payment transaction have been successfully written to the accounting system. If the information has not been successfully written, a notification, such as an e-mail, may be sent in step 217 to a company personnel that the payment was not properly communicated to the accounting system and will need to be completed manually. If the information was successfully written to the accounting system, a message may be outputted to the user in step 218 confirming the payment. The message may be sent by e-mail, for example.
The writing of the records into the account transactions file may be detected in step 219. The writing of the record may trigger the execution of an accounting program for posting the authorization and settlement data to the user's account and to financial records of the service provider in step 220. The accounting program may be a JD Edwards accounting program, for example. Accordingly, the selected invoice is updated to reflect the payment. In step 221, the accounting program updates the custom transaction table and outputs the updated invoice information to the user. In step 222, the processing server detects posting of payments completed and updates the processing server data store, i.e., the batch header record created in step 208, based on the completed payments.
In an exemplary embodiment of the present invention, a DB2 database trigger executes the accounting program, which may include the following steps. The transaction may be assigned a cash receipts batch number, and a batch header record may be created. A header payment record may be read from the header file. Until all detail records have been processed, the following steps may occur: Obtain detail payment records from the detail file, Obtain open invoice record from accounting program detail file, Verify that the payment detail record and the open invoice record match, Write records to a file, Execute an accounts receivable batch cash application program, and Update detail payment record with batch number. The accounts receivable batch cash application program may update the user's accounts receivable records, create a general ledger accounting records, and create audit reports. After all detail records have been processed, the header payment record is updated with a batch number, and an accounting program is executed to post cash receipts batch.
In another exemplary embodiment of the present invention, there is a computer-readable medium encoded with a computer program for managing an account balance of a user via remote connection to an account database system of a service provider. The term “computer-readable medium” as used herein refers to any medium that participates in providing instructions for execution. Such a medium may take many forms, including but not limited to, non-volatile media, volatile media, and transmission media. Non-volatile media includes, for example, optical or magnetic disks. Volatile media includes, for example, dynamic memory. Transmission media includes coaxial cables, copper wire and fiber optics. Transmission media can also take the form of acoustic or light waves, such as those generated during radio-wave and infra-red data communications.
Common forms of computer-readable media include, for example, a floppy disk, a flexible disk, hard disk, magnetic tape, or any other magnetic medium, a CD-ROM, any other optical medium, punch cards, paper tape, any other physical medium with patterns of holes, a RAM, a PROM, an EPROM, a FLASH-EPROM, any other memory chip or cartridge, a carrier wave, or any other medium from which a computer can read.
An exemplary embodiment of a computer-readable medium encoded with a computer program for managing an account balance of a user via remote connection to an account database system of a service provider is illustrated in
While the invention has been described in connection with various embodiments, it will be understood that the invention is capable of further modifications. This application is intended to cover any variations, uses or adaptation of the invention following, in general, the principles of the invention, and including such departures from the present disclosure as, within the known and customary practice within the art to which the invention pertains.
The foregoing disclosure has been set forth merely to illustrate the invention and is not intended to be limiting. Since modifications of the disclosed embodiments incorporating the spirit and substance of the invention may occur to persons skilled in the art, the invention should be construed to include everything within the scope of the appended claims and equivalents thereof.
