Patent ID: 8112355

Claim:
An electronic payment system, comprising: a server associated with a buyer's organization, the server associated with the buyer's organization including: logic that receives an electronic invoice from a seller, the electronic invoice being subject to invoice definition rules for accepting information into the invoice as defined by the buyer's organization, the invoice definition rules including rules for the format by which the invoice receives data, validation of information for respective fields of the invoice, extraction of information from the buyer's organization's systems, and transformation of status information; logic that electronically routes the invoice to individuals in the buyer's organization; logic that receives from a set of two or more of the individuals in the buyer's organization indications that the invoice is disputed, corrections to disputed portions of the invoice, comments for the seller regarding the disputed portions of the invoice and comments for other individuals in the buyer's organization regarding the invoice; logic that forwards to a server associated with the seller an indication that the invoice is disputed, the corrections to the disputed portions of the invoice and the comments for the seller, without forwarding the comments for other individuals in the buyer's organization; logic that automatically forwards information regarding the dispute to another individual in the same organization as a first individual responsible for responding to a notice regarding the dispute if the first individual has not responded within a particular time, the another individual being a manager of the first individual, the manager being determined according to an established hierarchy based on hierarchical data retained in an escalation level in management scheme obtained from a human resource management system (HRMS); logic that withholds payment for the invoice until an indication from the buyer's organization has been received that the buyer's organization has determined that the invoice may be paid; and logic that displays a history of the dispute to individuals in the buyer's organization on request, the history including indication of users who entered dispute data, the indication of users who entered dispute data being made available only to the buyer's organization; a server associated with the seller, the server associated with the seller including: logic that receives from the server associated with the buyer's organization the indication, the corrections and the comments; and logic that receives from the seller a response to the buyer's organization indication, the response including an acceptance of changes suggested by the buyer's organization or an indication that the seller disputes the changes suggested by the buyer's organization.