Patent ID: 8676674

Claim:
A method performed by a payment processor that executes software instructions for creating and managing electronic payment accounts on a financial management system, the method comprising: associating an account with an account owner; receiving, through a user interface from the account owner, entries that specify a bill to be associated with the account, members of a group to be associated with the account, for each member, the respective member's share of a total amount of the bill, and different levels of account access for different members, the different levels of account access differing in terms of read-only access to see account status and recent activity, co-authority to request payments to the account from others, or approval authority for approving payment of the bill before the payment is processed; sending, by the payment processor, a request, to each member of the group, to receive the member's share of the total amount; receiving, by the payment processor, from each member, the member's share of the total amount; and paying the bill, by the payment processor, automatically upon receiving all of the shares of the total amount of the bill; wherein the bill is an itemized paperless bill delivered directly to the payment processor, and wherein the payment processor automatically allocates itemized amounts in the bill to individual members of the group; wherein the receiving steps, the sending step and the paying step are performed by the payment processor.