Patent ID: 8160971

Claim:
A method of monitoring a status of an order placed by a customer for a product produced by a supplier to be delivered to a retail location, the method comprising: collecting, using a computer system with access to a computer-readable medium accessible over a communication network, order information about the order from an order database included as part of an order routing system of the supplier and adding the order information to an electronic record relating to the order, wherein the order information includes information that identifies at least one of: the product to be delivered, a quantity of the product desired to be delivered, and a requested ship date; collecting, using the computer system, warehouse information from a computer-accessible warehouse database in communication with a warehouse management system and adding the warehouse information to the electronic record to establish a relationship between the order information collected and the warehouse information collected for the order, wherein the warehouse information comprises at least one of: a scheduled load date, a scheduled date of departure of the product from the warehouse, and a scheduled date of delivery of the product to the retail location; including in the electronic record relating to the order, a low-cost carrier offering a lowest shipping rate relative to shipping rates offered by a group of available carriers for transporting the quantity of the product to the retail location; using the computer system, comparing the lowest shipping rate offered by the low-cost carrier to a predetermined cutoff rate that has been previously approved as a maximum acceptable shipping rate that is acceptable to at least one of the supplier and the warehouse as a standard shipping rate, above which supervisory approval of the lowest shipping rate as a premium shipping rate is required; in response to a determination resulting from said comparing that the lowest shipping rate exceeds the cutoff rate, providing an alert for the order to indicate that the lowest shipping rate exceeds the cutoff rate; generating a report that displays the order information, the warehouse information, the low-cost carrier, the alert and the lowest shipping rate associated with the order corresponding to a predetermined time; and transmitting the report to be viewed in real-time by a supervisor.