Patent ID: 7000178

Claim:
A system for classifying cost estimations from a plurality of business partners, the system provided on a computer of a requesting side that requests each of the plurality of business partners to submit a cost estimation; means for receiving the cost estimation as electronic document from a computer of each of the plurality of business partners via a network; a criteria table for storing a target value for each of items included in the electronic document and a score that is predetermined in accordance with a value of each of the items; a partner table for storing, for each of the plurality of business partners, a partner code for identifying the business partner and attributes evaluated for the business partner; wherein the criteria table further stores a score that is predetermined corresponding to each of the evaluated attributes; a score counter provided corresponding to the received electronic document; a controller configured to: compare the value of each item included in each of the received documents with the target value to determine documents including an item that does not meet the target value as being rejected; for each of documents that are not determined as being rejected, extract from the criteria table a score corresponding to the value of each item included in each of the received documents to add the extracted score to the score counter; for each of the documents tat are not determined as being rejected, read from the document a partner code for identifying a business partner from which the document is received, access the partner table to extract attributes evaluated for a business partner indicated by the partner code, extract from the criteria table a score corresponding to the extracted attributes and add the extracted score to the score counter; and assign, in accordance with a value of the score counter, a priority to each of the documents that are not determined as being rejected.