Patent ID: 8112337

Claim:
A method for clearing financial instruments through an electronic clearing system in which a cost of clearing an instrument varies with a time of day, comprising: receiving by a gateway over a network electronic files of items including data from scanned financial instruments including an amount of each of said financial instruments; applying a rule by a processing control system to sort said items by determining, for each of said associated financial instruments, whether said item associated with said instrument should be stored by said gateway or forwarded by said gateway for clearing said associated financial instrument without storage; said rule including a step of, for each of said items, determining whether said amount of said associated instrument exceeds a threshold amount, said threshold amount being based upon a time of day said file containing said items is received and a per item fee for clearing said associated financial instrument associated with said time of day; upon receipt of one of said items in which said amount of said associated financial instruments exceeds said first threshold amount, forwarding said associated item by said gateway over a network for clearing without storage; and upon receipt of one of said items in which said amount of said associated financial instruments does not exceed said first threshold amount, placing said associated item in a storage associated with said gateway, and subsequently retrieving said associated item from said storage and forwarding said associated item over a network by said gateway for clearing at a later time having a relatively lower per item fee for clearing associated therewith.