Patent ID: 7426486

Claim:
A data collection and reporting method comprising, in a central computer system, automatically, that is, independent of any required human intervention: i) receiving, directly from a device for converting a physical form into a transmittable, electronic representation of the physical form, over a transmission channel, the electronic representation of the physical form, which embodies a report concerning at least one parameter from at least one sender, the form having a plurality of data fields, each corresponding to an indicator of at least a partial value of at least one of the parameters; ii) identifying the location of the data fields in the received electronic representation of the form; and iii) both extracting report data from the report and storing the extracted report data in a predetermined common format in a memory for subsequent processing; for at least one third party, storing a set of party-specific rules in the memory; associating the received report with the corresponding third party; and associating at least one fourth party with the sender and with at least one of the third parties; in which: the third party is an agency that communicates with the central computer system using an agency computer system; the fourth party is a client of the agency and communicates with the central bomputer system using a client computer system, the agency and client being contractually related entities; the sender is a person referred by the agency to the client and performs work tasks for the client; the at least one parameter includes time worked by the sender on behalf of the client; and further comprising, within the central computer system: via a publicly accessible transmission network, receiving access requests from the agency and the client sent through their respective computer systems for portions of the extracted report data defined according to the respective party-specific rules, and responding to the access requests by returning the requested report data to the agency and client, respectively, including automatically, that is, independent of any required human intervention, completing any requests for interactive and iterative review, modification or annotation, inclusive, of the report data by the agency and client according to each party's respective party-specific rules, whereby the central computer system is an intermediary system between the sender on the one hand and the agency and client on the other hand and exposes different interfaces to the sender, agency and client; converting the extracted report data into a format specified by the rules associated with that third party, whereby third parties operating different hardware platforms and processing software may receive and process extracted report data from the same memory within the central computer system; and transferring a copy of the extracted report data to the third party via the network, whereby the transferred data resides at and is available for processing by the third party.