Method and system for handling disputes in an electronic invoice management system

摘要

A method and system for managing invoices offering dispute handling capabilities is provided. The electronic invoice management system includes a biller machine and a customer computing unit interconnected by a data network. The biller machine includes an invoice generation unit and a dispute resolution unit. The dispute resolution unit is linked to a dispute history data structure holding a plurality of groups of records, each group being associated to a corresponding customer entity. Each record includes reasons a prior invoice produced by the invoice generation unit was disputed by a customer entity. The dispute resolution unit is responsive to a message received from the customer computing unit over the data network and representative of reasons to dispute a new invoice to locate the group of records corresponding to the given customer entity associated to the customer computing unit. A record is created from the message and then stored in the dispute history data structure for future use.