WO2006106539A1

WO2006106539A1 - Process and system for transmitting, storing and managing electronic documents

Info

Publication number: WO2006106539A1
Application number: PCT/IT2005/000193
Authority: WO
Inventors: Piero Luigi Crudele
Original assignee: Arca Consulting S.R.L.
Priority date: 2005-04-07
Filing date: 2005-04-07
Publication date: 2006-10-12

Abstract

A system is disclosed for transmitting, storing and managing electronic documents, particularly intelligent electronic documents containing information of an economic financial accounting nature, comprising at least one server processor (101), at least one client processor (103) and connecting means (105), such intelligent electronic documents being complying with an iDoc technology; a process is further disclosed for transmitting, storing and managing electronic documents, particularly intelligent electronic documents containing information of an economic financial accounting nature, comprising the steps of server storing (F201), server procedure (F203), client storing (F501) and client procedure (F503).

Description

PROCESS AND SYSTEM FOR TRANSMITTING, STORING AND MZVMAGING ^•reCTRQNIC DOCUMENTS

The present invention refers to a process for transmitting, storing and managing electronic documents, in particular electronic documents containing information of an economic-financial-accounting nature. Specifically, a format is defined through which it is possible to transfer digital information from a source to a set of addresses guaranteeing the maximum usability of exchanged data.

As known, all subjects, being physical people or juridical entities, receive an enormous amoun of documents, especially documents of an economi-financial-accounting nature. The support that is almost always used for such documents is paper and, consequently, its transmission media is the mail service in its varius forms. In order to give an idea of the amount of documents that each one receives, it is enough to think how many documents are received from banks (account reports, accounting, summaries, etc.) or from utilities providers (telephone, gas, electric power notes) .

All these documents must be received, ordered, stored, often searched, with a high waste of time and resources .

The burden is much greater when the addressee is a company, since in such situation the majority of the above documents must be stored for many years and often it is supporting accounting documents.

The above aspects are still more evident if reference is made to juridical entities (Companies, Departments, etc.) that send documents.

In fact, by observing the problem from the point of view of those that must send a high amount of documents (always refer to bank, or utilities providers, but also to credit card providers, and even to the same companies that ship invoices, payment documents, etc.), the burden has extremely relevant sizes in terms of direct and indirect costs (printing, enveloping, shipment, control, etc) .

Many attempts have been made for removing or at least reducing the impact of the physical management of documents, very often replacing the document with an electronic image and replacing the mail service with a telematic network (internet), but with scarce successes.

The basic reason is that anyway the addressee must print the received electronic document, which, once returned on paper, has again all the previously-described problems.

Object of the present invention, therefore, is solving the above prior art problems by providing a process and a system for transmitting, storing and managing electronic documents, in particular electronic documents that contain information of an economic-financial- accounting nature, that replaces or operates together with the transmission of the related paper documents, allowing the full technical/legal equivalence and allowing to automatically process and handle such information without their previous necessary manual entry.

The above and other objects and advantages of the invention, as will appear from the following description, are obtained by a process for transmitting, storing and managing electronic documents as disclosed in claim 1. Moreover, the above and other objects and advantages of the invention, as will appear from the following description, are obtained by a system for transmitting, storing and managing electronic documents as disclosed in claim 2. Preferred embodiments and non-trivial variations of the present invention are the subject of the dependent claims.

The present invention will be better described by some preferred embodiments thereof, provided as a non- limiting example, with reference to the enclosed drawings, in which:

- FIG. 1 shows a schematic representation of an embodiment of the system according to the present invention; and

- FIG. 2 to 7 show flow diagrams that point out the steps of the process according to the present invention.

The process and the system according to the present invention allow wholly safely transmitting electronic documents, in particular documents containing information of an economic-financial-accounting nature, as an alternative to the transmittion of their related paper documents, simultaneously allowing the full technical/legal equivalence of the received electronic document with respect to their related paper document and, consequenly, storing and managing such information.

With reference to FIG. 1, it is possible to note a schematic representation of the system according to the present invention; such system is in fact composed of at least one server processor 101 in the company, institute or department that wishes to automate the transmission of documents containing information of an economic-financial- accounting nature in the form of related electronic documents, of at least one client processor 103 by the private user or company, that is adapted to receive and store the electronic documents received by the server processor 101 in order to make them usable for following analyses and automatic control services, and with connecting means 105, such as, for example, the Internet network, for transmitting the electronic documents adapted to operatively connect the server processors 101 with the client processors 103.

In order to perform their functions, the server processor 101 and the client processor 103 are adapted to respectively store and execute a server application software and a client application software.

The server and client application software are implemented to exchange the electronic documents, by using the connecting means 105. Such electronic documents are complying with a technology called iDoc, whose operation is based on: intelligent documents; semantic dictionaries for information contained in the intelligent document.

Before defining what is meant by the term "intelligent document", it is necessary to clarify two essential items for the present invention: a) difference between data and information b) hierarchical and structured nature of information It is possible to clarify the difference cited in item a) through an example. A service company sends a paper invoice every month. Obviously, the invoice contains "pieces of information" obtained from processing the "data" being present in the data base and related to delivered services. If a user calls the company's call center in order to request clarifications related to an invoice, he has as only references the pieces of information being present in the paper invoice, so that he will be able to cite only references of the type "amount on the third line" or document number, etc.. For call center operators, the electronic data being present in the data base are of no use, since there are no rules to link the printed data to the data in the data base. The contrary is also true, namely that, in order to perform statistics about consumptions, information being present in an invoice cannot be used directly, while original data being present in the data base are the only piece of information that can be processed.

Item b) directly derives from the first remark. In order to increase the synthesis capability of a digital system, a piece of information must be necessarily structured through a top-down process, that, starting from very complex abstract concepts, details their contents through a sequence of simpler and simpler entities, till it gets to elementary entities that cannot be further decomposed.

Such process is usually represented through a tree, where every node represents an aggregate of information, and the leaves collect elementary information. For example, an accounting movement in a bank Account / Report is composed of the aggregation of simpler entities such as (Crediting Date, Operation Date, Description, amount to be given, amount to be taken, etc.), and similarly a date by convention is composed of a day, month and year.

By structuring information in this way, it will be possible to assign a code to every entity, such code pointing out its semantics through a thematic dictionary, namely a collection of entities that is complete for a given subject. Every document can be created starting from one or more dictionaries, thereby documenting all information contained therein through a process described in the present application.

The intelligent document is a new mode for representing the electronic documents through which any electronic document is represented by two combined and mutually-dependent elements: the visual image of the electronic document obtained by using available technologies (for example, Portable Document Format (PDF) ) ; the set of Information Entities (and Elementary Information composing them) , contained in the electronic document in a digital format and therefore that are able to be processed by any computer; the semantics of every Information Entity and every Elementary Information; the Link to the Reference Thematic Dictionary available on the Network.

All information contained in the intelligent document are identified by using the above semantic dictionary. The semantic dictionary of Entities and Information contained in the intelligent document is composed of a set of keywords and definitions, that describe, within a specific application domain (bank, insurances, industrial, etc.), the meaning of individual pieces of information contained in the intelligent documents that are exchanged by the users of the system according to the present invention.

A format has therefore been defined that joins these two components and that allows the perfect functional integration between a document producer and the applications that, when receiving documents according to such format, will be able do display their contents and store their data to supply the application functions.

From the documents producer' s point of view, an application is provided that will be herein below called "writer" that will product files in a format called "iDoc". The electronic document is therefore the union of its "visual" representation of information according to the definition in item a) and the set of data that are semantically defined through metadata (tags) being present in the dictionary used for creating it.

From the end user' s point of view, a generalised "viewer" application or a set of library functions are provided to develop ad hoc applications by exploiting the format described above. Substantially, the viewer will be able to display the document and the pieces of information contained therein, and simultaneously will be able to save the enclosed data that originated the displayed information, because other applications can further process them.

An example will better clarify the scope of the invention. When transferring an Account / Report in iDoc format it will be possible not only to display and print the document exactly as it had been shipped to the user's home, but it will also be possible to populate a data base, that an application will be able to exploit to obtain pieces of information of the type "check whether the salary has been credited within the date xx:xx:xxxx" or "verify whether cheque n. xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxx has been debited" or sum all amounts related to debiting movements exceeding 1000 € related to the period from xx:xx:xxxx to yy:yy:yyyy. It is clear that such functionalities would not be possible starting from paper documents or only from their digitised representation. It is also evident that, starting from these basic functions, it will be possible to define an evolved user interface through which, when displaying the document, the user will be able to locate an entity (elementary or complex according to the definition in item b) and by selecting it with the mouse, display all information (elementary data) that are composing it or that have brought about the information being present in the document.

Similarly, it will be possible to export, in order to supply third parties' applications, the data that are present in a document in iDoc format by simply selecting the portion of information of interest and automatically receiving the set of useful data, with all XML tags describing semantics and properties through the dictionary.

As already pointed out, the server application software is the software program residing on the server processor 101 of the individual subjects (senders) that must ship the intelligent documents.

The client application software instead is the software program residing on the client processor 103 of the single subjects (addressees) that must receive the intelligent electronic documents sent by the server processors 101.

With reference in particular to FIG. 2, it can be noted that the implementation of the server application comprises a step F201 of server storing and a step F203 of server procedure; with reference to FIG. 3, it can be noted that the step F201 of server storing comprises the steps of: storing (F301) the electronic documents to be shipped to the individual addressees; storing (F303) a complete copy of the semantic dictionary of information about the application domain to which the sender belongs; and storing (F305) the electronic acknowledgment receipts send by the individual addressees.

With reference to FIG. 4, it can be noted ahta the step F203 of server procedure comprises the steps of: receiving (F401) the printing flows, in a conventional format, from the sender's information system; creating (F403) the intelligent electronic documents and keeping them in a suitable shipment queue; managing (F405) the connection with individual addressees; managing (F407) the identification of individual addressees; managing (F409) safety, privacy and unchangeability of all sent electronic documents; sending (F411) the intelligent electronic documents to the individual addressees when the connection is established; receiving (F413) the electronic acknowledgment receipts of the sent intelligent electronic documents; and replying (F415) to the update requests of the semantic dictionary performed by the individual addressees.

With reference in particular to FIG. 5, it can be noted that the implementation of the client application comprises a step F501 of client storing and a step F503 of client procedure; with reference to FIG. 6, it can be noted that the step F501 of client storing comprises the steps of:

- storing (F601) all intelligent electronic documents received from senders; and storing (F603) a subset of the information semantic dictionary (local semantic dictionary) ; the local semantic dictionary will always and only contain the keywords of information contained in received intelligent electronic documents, in order to reduce the working and memory load of the client processor 103.

With reference to FIG. 7, it can be noted that the step F503 of client procedure comprises the steps of: cyclically connecting (F701) with individual senders and allowing one' s own identification; receiving (F703) the intelligent electronic documents sent by the senders; sending (F705) , if requested by the senders, specific electronic acknowledgment receipts; checking [FlOl) that all information contained in individual received intelligent electronic documents are represented in the local semantic dictionary; if necessary, asking (F709) the sender, and receiving the update of the local semantic dictionary; inserting (F711) the received intelligent electronic documents in electronic folders organised hierarchically; such hierarchical scheme can be, for example, as follows: a. Sector (for example: banks, insurances, utilities, etc.); b. Sender (for example: Bank A, Bank B, etc.); c. Type of received intelligent document (for example: account reports, accounting, etc.); d. Individual document (for example; account report dated XX/XX/XXXX) ; possibly, allowing (F713) to perform searches and processing, even complex ones, about the information contents of individual intelligent documents, and inserting

(F715) behaviour and check rules; such behaviour and check rules can be, as a non-limiting example: warning the addressee about the arrival of documents classified as "urgent" by the sender; automatically performing the check on "domiciled" cash and payment operations; automatically reconciling the correct extinction of operations (issued cheques, bancomat or credit card payments, etc. ) ; warning the user about expiring cash/payment operations; - informing the addressees about anomalous operations detected in the documents (improper operations performed with credit cards, out-of-limit users, unjustified debiting, etc. ) ; checking the exact application of computation criteria and contractual shares by senders (interests, expenses, etc.) .

Moreover, many other functions and tools can be made available for the user to which intelligent electronic documents are addressed, such as, for example:

- functions of enriching and chaining the electronic documents data base, through which a user can associate, to individual movements being present in the received electronic documents, his own paper documentation (invoices, expense notes, credit card purchasing certifications, etc.) detected through a scanner, or electronic documentation (text documents, spreadsheets, digital photographs, etc.), in order to obtain the classification and ordered storage of all documentation supporting a performed accouting operation (issue of a cheque, payment order, etc.);

- certified printing functions; functions of entering movements through which the user can manually enter newly generated movements (bancomat withdrawal, issue of cheques, credit card payment, etc.). Such entry automatically activates a check function at the end of debiting (for example from the account report) . The lack of debiting or the debiting of a different and unexpected amount will generate an anomaly signalling; automatic back-up functions with which the user is protected from possible data losses due to a malfunction or crash of his own computer; such information-extracting tools that are compatible with company information systems (tools adapted to solve, particularly in companies, the problem of reconciling the movements between internal accounting and bank documents) .

Claims

1. System for transmitting, storing and managing intelligent electronic documents, particularly electronic documents containing information of an economic - financial

- accounting nature, characterised in that it comprises: at lest one sender server processor (101) adapted to store and execute a server application software; at least one addressee client processor (103) adapted to store and execute a client application software; and connecting means (105) adapted to allow a transfer of said intelligent electronic documents from said sender server processor (101) to said addressee client processor (103) , said intelligent electronic documents complying with an iDoc technology using at least one intelligent electronic document and at least one semantic dictionary of information contained in said intelligent electronic document.

2. Process for transmitting, storing and managing intelligent electronic documents, particularly intelligent electronic documents containing information of an economic

- financial - accounting nature, using the system of claim 1, characterised in that it comprises the steps of: server storing (F201) ; server procedure (F203) ; client storing (F501) client procedure (F503) .

3. Process according to claim 2, characterised in that said server storing step (F201) comprises the steps of: storing (F301) said electronic documents to be shipped to individual addressees; storing (F303) a complete copy of said semantic dictionary of information about the application domain to which the sender belongs; and storing (F305) the electronic acknowledgment receipts send by said addressees.

4. Process according to claim 2, characterised in that said server procedure step (F203) comprises the steps of: receiving (F401) printing flows from an information system of said sender; creating (F403) said intelligent electronic documents and keeping them in a shipment queue to said addressees; managing (F405) connections with said individual addressees; managing (F407) an identification of said individual addressees; managing (F409) safety, privacy and unchangeability of said sent electronic documents; sending (F411) said intelligent electronic documents to said individual addressees when a connection is established; receiving (F413) electronic acknowledgment receipts of said sent intelligent electronic documents; and replying (F415) to update requests of said semantic dictionary performed by said individual addressees.

5. Process according to claim 2, characterised in that said client storing step (F501) comprises the steps of: storing (F601) all said intelligent electronic documents received from said senders; and storing (F603) a subset of said information semantic dictionary in a local semantic dictionary.

6. Process according to claim 2, characterised in that said client procedure step (F503) comprises the steps of: cyclically connecting (F701) said individual addressees with said individual senders and allowing an identification; receiving (F703) said intelligent electronic documents sent by said senders; sending (F705) , if requested by said senders, specific electronic acknowledgment receipts; checking [FlOl) that all information contained in said individual received intelligent electronic documents are represented in said local semantic dictionary; asking (F709) to said sender, and receiving, an update of said local semantic dictionary; and inserting (F711) said received intelligent electronic documents in electronic folders organised hierarchically.

7. Process according to claim 6, characterised in that said client procedure step (F503) further comprises the step of performing (F713) searches and processing on an information contents of said individual intelligent documents and inserting (F715) behaviour and check rules.

8. Process according to claim 7, characterised in that said behaviour and check rules are: warning said addressee about the arrival of documents classified as urgent by said sender; automatically performing a check on domiciled cash and payment operations; automatically reconciling a correct extinction of operations; warning said addressee about expiring cash/payment operations; informing said addressee about anomalous operations detected in said intelligent documents; and checking an exact application of computation criteria and contractual shares by said senders.

9. System according to claim 1, characterised in that said server application software is adapted to perform the process according to claims 3 and 4.

10. System according to claim 1, characterised in that said client application software is adapted to perform the process according to claims 5 and 6.

11. System according to claim 1, characterised in that said client application software comprises: functions of enriching and chaining a data base of said electronic documents; certified printing functions; movements entry functions; automatic back-up functions; and tools for extracting compatible information with company information systems.

12. Computer program comprising computer program code means adapted to perform all steps of said process according to any one of claims 2 to 8 when said program is executed on a computer.