Patent ID: 7813978

Claim:
A method for tracking and approving legal expenses incurred by a business entity using a legal budgeting computer system, the business entity engaged in the business of providing financial services to a plurality of customers, said method comprising the steps of: creating within the legal budgeting computer system a first legal matter of a plurality of legal matters reflecting legal work to be performed by an outside counsel; designating the first legal matter as a deal related legal matter, wherein the deal related legal matter involves a financing provided by the business entity to a first customer of the plurality of customers; creating a purchase order for the first legal matter including a budgeted amount which is expected to be paid to the outside counsel for performing the legal work; receiving at the legal budgeting computer system from the outside counsel an invoice including invoice data and an invoice amount; determining whether the received invoice corresponds to at least one of the plurality of legal matters; if the legal budgeting computer system determines that the received invoice corresponds to the first legal matter, then the computer system: designates the invoice amount as including at least one of a reimbursable amount and a non-reimbursable amount; prompts an account manager to designate a method of reimbursement for the invoice including for any reimbursable amount at least one of paid at close, charge to good faith, charge to loan, and customer to wire money, and for any non-reimbursable amount a non-reimbursable charge to cost center; submits the invoice using the legal budgeting computer system to an approval process; validates the approved invoice amount by comparing the approved invoice amount to the budgeted amount; pays the approved invoice amount to the outside counsel; and automatically reconciles the approved invoice amount with an amount recorded in a sub-ledger accounting system of the business entity, wherein the amount recorded in the sub-ledger accounting system includes any reimbursable amount of the invoice; and if the legal budgeting computer system determines that the received invoice does not correspond to one of the plurality of legal matters, then the legal budgeting computer system initiates an interface failure, holds the received invoice and any previously submitted related invoices, and automatically processes the received invoice and the previously submitted related invoices after a second legal matter of the plurality of legal matters is created, wherein the received invoice and the previously submitted related invoices correspond to the second legal matter.