Patent ID: 7822653

Claim:
A transaction processing system for processing payment and classifying accounting data for a plurality of disparate transaction parties, the system comprising: a database configured to receive and store for each of the disparate transaction parties, user profiles, auditing rules and accounting data classification rules; an association processor arrangement configured and arranged to: receive transaction data, access the user profiles including information about each transaction party involved in a transaction for controlling each transaction party's access to the transaction processing system and for associating the received transaction data with one of the transaction parties, and associate the received transaction data with transaction party identification data as a function of the user profiles and information in the received transaction data; an auditing processor configured and arranged, for the received transaction data associated with a transaction for which payment is to be made, to: retrieve the auditing rules for the associated transaction party, the auditing rules including information for authorizing payment for the disparate transaction parties involved in the transaction and on behalf of at least one of the disparate transaction parties, audit the received transaction data using the auditing rules, and authorize payment for the transaction as a function of the audit; and a classification engine configured and arranged to assign at least one accounting code, that corresponds to an expense classification for a regulatory standard for recording business expenses, to the received transaction data as a function of the associated transaction party identification data, thereby providing expense classification data for access by the associated transaction party.