Patent ID: 7343325

Claim:
A method of providing a price structure for a transaction relating to a complex product or service to be provided by multiple providers in a business relationship, within an electronic commerce back-end platform, and comprising: providing a product administration interface for the providers to define their respective revenue streams for the product or service, and to collaboratively define business rules to determine a price structure of a tangible product provided by one or more of the multiple providers or a service rendered by one or more of the multiple providers; providing a customer interface for performing a transaction with respect to the product or service at a transaction price; providing within a computer memory, responsive to both the product administration interface and the customer interface, a pricing tree of price components for a unit of each transaction with respect to the product or service, the components comprising: a first revenue stream representing funds to be distributed in whole or in part to a first provider; and a second revenue stream representing funds to be distributed in whole or in part to a second provider; and the revenue streams altogether making up the transaction price; wherein the components stay discretely allocated in the pricing tree, and wherein the components of the pricing tree are stored independently from the product or service, and wherein the components are automatically accounted for within the computer memory to permit the funds to be distributed at predetermined.