Patent ID: 8719126

Claim:
A funds collection system, comprising: an automatic incremental billing computer system configured to perform automatic attempts to collect payment from a consumer for a charge from at least one credit card transaction by the consumer, by recharging a credit card of the consumer at automatically determined amounts which are lower than the charge, while following credit card charging rules which are in effect at a time of the credit card transaction and thereby avoiding renegotiating the charge or a payment plan with the consumer; and an accounting module with software and computing hardware comprising a computer processor, the accounting module configured to digitally receive credit card transaction data sent electronically from a card reader and to automatically separate a sales tax amount from a purchase amount owed to a merchant by a consumer, by using the credit card transaction data, wherein the accounting module is configured to separate a sales tax amount from a purchase amount which has been actually collected by using the automatic incremental billing computer system; wherein the system is configured to manage funds as follows: to provide a transfer of sales tax funds to a sales tax holding account, to a sales tax collection authority, or to both, wherein the sales tax holding account is an interest-bearing account which holds sales tax funds prior to transfer of said sales tax funds to the sales tax collection authority in response to execution of a specified number greater than one of credit card transactions since sales tax funds were last so transferred, wherein the accounting module is configured to track re-investment of interest back into the sales tax holding account, and at least a portion of profits from the interest-bearing account are re-invested for a period which is in a range of 45-120 days, and wherein the automatic incremental billing system uses at least two different wait periods, including a first wait period between retries to collect and a second wait period between retries to collect, and wherein the first wait period is used for a transaction which occurred in November, December, or January, and the second wait period is used for a transaction which did not occur in November, December, or January.