Data processing: financial – business practice – management – or co – Automated electrical financial or business practice or... – Accounting
Reexamination Certificate
1998-06-08
2001-10-16
Trammell, James P. (Department: 2161)
Data processing: financial, business practice, management, or co
Automated electrical financial or business practice or...
Accounting
Reexamination Certificate
active
06304857
ABSTRACT:
TECHNICAL FIELD
This invention relates to electronic billing systems. More particularly, this invention relates to gateways for reliably exchanging billing data and related information between billers and a third party billing service center, and for tracking the movement of such data and information.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Essentially everyone is familiar with receiving bills. Every month, like clockwork, millions of consumers and businesses receive bills for goods and services. For convenience, the term “consumer” is used throughout this document to represent both a typical person who consumes goods and services as well as a business that consumes goods and services.
At the end of each billing cycle, a biller generates a bill or statement for each consumer account having a positive or negative account balance, or having transactions that yielded a zero balance. As used herein, a “biller” is any party that originates billing statements for goods or services rendered to the consumer. Examples of billers are utilities, government, merchants, and intermediate billing services such as banks. The billing statement is typically customized according to the biller's preferences. For example, it is common for billing statements to be printed on colored paper, display the biller's logo, provide a billing summary, and show itemized transactions. This information is organized in a custom format that is unique to and controlled by the biller.
The biller also creates remittance information that associates the consumer account with the bill and any payment toward the bill. The remittance information is typically in the form of a detachable stub or coupon that the consumer detaches from the billing statement and returns along with the payment. This remittance stub is also customized according to the biller's preferences.
With the growing popularity and use of personal finance computer software, it would be beneficial for billers to distribute their billing statements electronically and to receive payments electronically. Unfortunately, most of the finance computer software focuses primarily on bill payment, with some emphasis on electronic bill management, but with little innovation in bill distribution and presentment. Many of these systems still rely on delivery of paper bills through the U.S. mail.
There is a prior art electronic bill payment system, however, that mentions the possibility of electronic bill distribution. This system is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,465,206, entitled “Electronic Bill Pay System,” which issued Nov. 7, 1995 and is assigned to Visa International. The Visa bill payment system permits bills to be sent to consumers via U.S. mail or email. Unfortunately, the system is limited in that the email message containing the bill must conform to requirements imposed by Visa. The requirements stem from the need to route remittance information back to the biller through the VisaNet® network. The biller has little or no control over the format concerning how the bill is presented to the consumer, but must instead accommodate a format compatible with the VisaNet® network. While it may be possible for the biller and biller bank to agree on some aspects of the billing format, the biller cannot independently control the format.
It would therefore be advantageous to devise an electronic bill distribution system that enables the biller to directly control the format for presenting the bill.
Separate from the bill format matter, there is another problem facing acceptance of electronic bill distribution systems. Billers may not be capable of, or may not wish to engage in, the task of electronically distributing billing statements. From a biller perspective, it would be much more advantageous to contract with a billing service to handle the electronic bill distribution tasks. However, contracting with a third party raises additional concerns. It is in the interest of the billing service to standardize the electronic distribution process to efficiently achieve economies of scale. Yet, the biller prefers that its bills be presented in customized formats, rather than standardized formats. In the Visa system, for example, the biller gives up control and customization to participate in the electronic system. Thus, for an electronic bill distribution system to be successfully adopted, it should accommodate the biller preferences of individuality while simultaneously facilitating the billing service's interests of standardization.
Another design consideration is that many billers already have established sophisticated, expensive accounting systems. It would be beneficial to devise a bill distribution and remittance management system that integrates smoothly with entrenched accounting systems so that companies are not required to change their traditional ways of practice.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
This invention concerns an electronic billing system and method for creating, designing, and distributing customized electronic billing statements. The electronic billing system provides a set of tools for a biller to create and design a customized billing statement. The biller independently controls the appearance and format of the billing statement. Once the statement is designed, the biller provides the statement format and billing information to a third party billing service center, which generates the electronic billing statements in the biller-designed format and electronically distributes the billing statements to consumers.
The billing system includes a biller integration system resident at each of the billers. The biller integration system is preferably a set of software tools that integrate with the biller's existing billing and accounting systems. The biller integration system includes a translator component to convert the billing data from the associated biller's existing billing system to an acceptable format. The biller integration system also includes a statement designer that enables the biller to create a billing statement template; a rules manager to establish rules for inclusion of particular data and information in the bill, and a resources manager to assist the biller in creating non-billing resources (e.g., logos, special offers, etc.).
To assist the biller in creating statement templates, the biller integration system maintains industry schema tables that are tailored to particular industries. The tables can be used to provide a default set of predefined billing categories for a given industry, which the biller might wish to use in its template. For example, an industry table for the energy industry might contain normal billing fields (e.g., amount due, due date, etc.) and industry-specific fields for energy consumption data such as previous meter reading, current meter reading, total number of kilowatts, and price per kilowatt. If the industry table contains sufficient fields for the biller's purpose, the biller need not create its own detail table containing customized billing categories. Alternatively, the biller can start with the industry table and add fields to customize the industry table.
The biller integration system sends the billing data, template, rules, and resources to the billing service center, where they are stored. The service center generates customized billing statements by inserting the data and resources into the template at the appropriate fields and accounting for the rules, and distributes the billing statements electronically to consumers.
The biller integration system and service center are each equipped with a gateway to facilitate the exchange of the statement template, the billing data, resources, and rules. Each gateway has a parcel manager to reliably transfer parcels and track the parcels as they go from one computer at the biller to another computer at the service center. Through this parcel handling and monitoring system, the biller integration system keeps the biller informed as to the location and status of the statement templates, the billing data, any forthcoming payments, and so forth.
REFERENCES
Buiten Todd Alan
Heindel David G.
Jakstadt Eric G.
Keith Jeffrey L.
Saliba Bassam A.
Elisca Pierre E.
Lee & Hayes PLLC
Microsoft Corporation
Trammell James P.
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