Patent ID: 7313537

Claim:
A system for reconciling a current inventory record having counts, pricing, and vintaging for a plurality of product types, comprising: a storage device comprising: a first database containing the current inventory record comprising count, vintage, and price information, a second database containing tables defining allowable product substitutions for the plurality of product types, and a representative price and vintaging table containing price and vintage records, the price and vintage table containing a representative price and a representative vintage for each of the plurality of product types, wherein the representative price and the representative vintage are statistically predetermined based on historical inventory records having outlier values for price and vintage removed; and a processing device configured to; receive an updated count for each product type of an inventory, obtain the current inventory record from the first database, remove from each count of the current inventory record, each instance of each count having outlier values for pricing or vintage, compare the updated count to the count of the current inventory record to obtain a difference in count for each product type, determine if the difference for a first product type indicates a shortage in the count of the current inventory record for the first product type relative to the updated count for the first product type, reference the product type of the shorted count of the current inventory record with the second database, determine if the first product type is interchangeable with a second product type, if the difference for the first product type indicates a shortage in the count of the current inventory record for the first product type, determine if the difference for the second product type indicates an excess in the count of the current inventory record for the second product type relative to the updated count for the second product type, if the first product type is interchangeable with a second product type, substitute the excess of the second product type in place of the shortage of the first product type in the current inventory record, if the difference for the second product type indicates an excess in the count of the current inventory record for the second product type, wherein the price and vintage information being substituted in place of the shortage of the first product type in the current inventory record is a representative price and a representative vintage from the representative price and vintage table; and generate a report showing reductions and additions to the count of the current inventory record.