Patent ID: 7636668

Claim:
An automated method of calculating appropriate invoice payments associated with a clinical trial study, the method comprising: (a) providing a software application program having equations and business rules that together define (i) a process associated with the clinical trial study, (ii) a timeline associated with the clinical trial study, and (iii) deliverables associated with the clinical trial study; (b) entering into the program: (i) entities that have been contracted to provide the deliverables to the clinical trial study, (ii) budget items and amounts related to the deliverables for the respective entities that have been contracted to provide the deliverables, (iii) for a plurality of the budget items, a time frame in which the budget items are expected to be incurred or paid; and (c) automatically calculating via a processor appropriate invoice payments for the deliverables for the respective entities that have been contracted to provide the deliverables at a specific time frame, wherein the calculation of the appropriate invoice payments is performed without entering into the program or otherwise using invoices from any of the entities, and is based on: (i) the equations and business rules in the program, and (ii) the items entered into the program in step (b)(i)-(iii).