Patent ID: 7398234

Claim:
A method for organizing vendor information comprising: receiving data comprising a plurality of accounts payable items, each accounts payable item having an associated first vendor name and an associated cost in a local currency, wherein the vendor name represents a business associated with a purchase transaction represented by the accounts payable item, and wherein at least one of the accounts payable items has a local currency that is different from that of at least one of the other accounts payable items; associating a first vendor identifier and a second vendor identifier using a computer for each of the accounts payable items, wherein the first vendor identifier uniquely identifies a first vendor associated with the first vendor name and the second vendor identifier indicates an organizational business relationship between the first vendor and one or more other vendors; converting the associated costs of each of the accounts payable items from the local currency to a global currency; calculating a purchasing total for each first vendor name expressed in the global currency by adding the converted associated costs for each of the accounts payable items; and determining the total expenditure for each vendor associated with said accounts payable items using the plurality of accounts payable items, the first vendor identifier, the second vendor identifier, and the purchasing total for each first vendor name.