Patent ID: 7870038

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving, by a computer based system for maintaining a procurement system, a catalog feed; parsing, by said computer based system, said catalog feed into catalog items, each of said catalog items being individually procurable; extracting, by said computer based system, a first item from said catalog items; determining, by said computer based system, that said first item is distinct from each item in a set of items previously transmitted to said procurement system; identifying, by said computer based system, a second item from said set of items previously transmitted to said procurement system, said second item being associated with said first item based on at least one correlating element; comparing, by the computer based system, said first item to said second item; identifying, by the computer based system, a variance between said first item to said second item; comparing, by said computer based system, said variance to a predetermined threshold; determining, by said computer based system, that said variance is at least one of within said predetermined threshold and outside said predetermined threshold, wherein said first item is at least one of automatically added to said procurement system in response to said variance being within said predetermined threshold and automatically hidden within said procurement system in response to said variance being outside said predetermined threshold; requesting, by said computer based system, a status of said first item, in response to said variance being outside said predetermined threshold; receiving, by said computer based system, said status from said first item, wherein said status changes the availability of said first item to at least one of available, not available, and invisible; and updating, by said computer based system, said procurement system based on said status.