Patent ID: 6850908

Claim:
A method for monitoring at least one of accounts receivable, accounts payable, inventory, trading partners, chart of accounts, invoices, and payments using a process management and workflow system coupled to a data repository, the process management and workflow system connected to an accounting system by a communications link, said method comprising the steps of: generating a financial report using the accounting system wherein the financial report includes at least one of accounts receivable and accounts payable; transmitting the financial report from the accounting system to the process management and workflow system; receiving the financial report at the process management and workflow system via an electronic data interchange; converting the financial report from one of a plurality of received document formats to a predetermined document format by determining whether preprocessing of the financial report is needed, determining whether segmentation of the financial report is needed wherein segmentation includes identifying a location of data within the financial report and relocating data within the financial report such that the report is recognizable, performing a document recognition process on the financial report including scanning the financial report to determine a file type of the financial report and comparing the determined file type to a list of known document file types stored in the data repository, and then by performing a mapping and translation process including selecting an extraction script based on the document recognition process for extracting and translating data from the financial report; extracting at least one of accounts receivable data and accounts payable data from the converted financial report; correcting data extraction errors using a quality control system; and loading the extracted data into the data repository.