WO2013163696A1

WO2013163696A1 - A system for real time reporting and responding to online transactions

Info

Publication number: WO2013163696A1
Application number: PCT/AU2013/000459
Authority: WO
Inventors: Robert LINCOLNE; Andrew BEESTON; Mark MANCQ
Original assignee: Brown Box Pty Limited
Priority date: 2012-05-04
Filing date: 2013-05-02
Publication date: 2013-11-07

Abstract

A provider's system (20) is associated with a vendor platform (14) for online transactions, a payment gateway (16) acting as an intermediary between the platform (14) and a customer's equipment (12) which system (20) integrates with multiple third parties (38, 40, 42 46). The system (20) allows analysis of online transactions to complement functions performed by third parties including the targeting of customers by communicating with customers after customers make a donation above a certain dollar threshold or when customers' purchases at online stores exceed a dollar threshold. The system (20) includes a data store (22), a communications module (24) and an information processing/management unit (26) comprising a transaction recording module (28), a transaction analysis module (30), a custom alert module (32), a reporting module (24) and a distribution module (36).

Description

A SYSTEM FOR REAL TIME REPORTING AND RESPONDING TO ONLINE

TRANSACTIONS

TECHNICAL FIELD

An invention relating to online transaction reporting and marketing.

Specifically it is in the area of automating and integrating information from third party payment systems (where payment may be financial payment with respect to product purchase, service purchase, subscription payment, donation or financial contribution of other kinds or non-financial contributions of various kinds) as well as in the field of transaction analysis, data matching and information synthesis.

BACKGROUND ART

A core requirement of any successful marketing campaign is the ability to build promotional or development activities in tandem with accessible methods of measuring return and establishing the value of specific target markets. Coupled with this is the requirement, both for retail and Not For Profit enterprises, to establish "customer intimacy" through better understanding of both individual and total market customer actions and transactions.

The online retail and donor solicitation space enjoys a large and increasing number of disparate tools for (i) accepting payment where such tools vary from bare payment gateways that only handle payments directed to the tool from an online shopfront to full online shopfronts that have integrated in them means for accepting payments over the internet (for example PayPal, Swipe, eWay, Shopify, Authorize.net, Google Checkout and many others) (ii) for performing other customer interactions (Wufoo, Survey Monkey for example) as well as (iii) tools for facilitating the distribution of marketing communication (email, sms and other modes - for example - MailChimp, CampaignMonitor, Essendex). However, these differently sourced gateways and marketing tools are not integrated in the current art to offer insight into customer trends while connecting with common online distribution channels.

There is strong and growing market demand for the ability to use 'best of class' service providers such as Mai!Chimp for communication and PayPal for payments together to create meaningful segmentation and transactional data that can be reported in many flexible ways including by the provision of alerts. Best of class service providers, however, often change over time. Flexibility in dealing with multiple and independent gateways and/or shopping carts is desirable. Currently there is no method or system that exists that can be used to (i) report and respond within seconds to live transactional data from (multiple and independent) gateways and/or shopping carts or other transaction systems, (ii) perform specific actions to create new insights and meaningful reports from stored transaction data and (iii) distribute the analysed data (also in real-time) to third parties while concurrently facilitating triggered responses to these transactions.

DISCLOSURE OF INVENTION

According to one aspect of the invention there is provided a system for real time reporting and responding to online transactions, wherein the system is comprised of a data store, a communications module, and an information processing unit wherein the information processing unit is under the control of computer program code which provides for:

a) a transaction recording module for:

i) capturing customer transaction data comprising individual customer transactions and a record of the source of the transactions ii) recording the customer transaction data as stored customer

transaction data for analysis by a transaction analysis module;

b) the transaction analysis module used for: i) analysing stored customer transaction data to identify the individual customer or customers and source of the transaction data;

ii) in the case where there is no aggregated customer transaction data, storing in the data store the stored customer transaction data passed to the transaction analysis module by the transaction recording system as aggregated customer transaction data, and in the case where there is historical or existing aggregated customer transaction data stored in the data store, updating the aggregated stored customer transaction data with the stored customer transaction data passed to the transaction analysis module by the transaction recording system, and;

iii) analysing aggregated customer transaction data to create analysis data;

iv) formatting and storing analysis data for downstream use by:

(1) a distribution module;

(2) a reporting module;

(3) a custom alerts module;

c) the distribution module for:

i) creating an authorised association with, and link to, at least one third party target destination system that contains customer data ii) automatically matching the analysis data with customer data in the third party destination system

iii) updating or creating fields within the third party destination system using the analysis data

d) the reporting module for:

i) receiving from the user, requests for report data; ii) extracting user requested data from analysis data that was created and/or updated by the transaction analysis module

iii) formatting report data;

!v) displaying, printing or transmitting the report data to the user;

e) the custom alert module for:

i) setting analysis data alert thresholds for sending notifications setting modes for notification (eg email, SMS, phone call, online chat message or other media);

ii) monitoring analysis data to identify whether alert thresholds have been met;

iii) causing notifications to be sent if alert thresholds have been met, Preferably the system is adapted to be used concurrently by a plurality of users wherein each user is assigned an account and account status and wherein the transaction recording module is adapted to first qualify each individual transaction by checking that the user account status entitles the user to access and use the system and where in the case of users with an account status that does not qualify them to access and use the system, the customer transaction data captured by the transaction capture module is stored in the data store as quarantined customer transaction data that only becomes accessible to the transaction analysis module once the customer transaction module has identified that the user's account status has changed to a status which is authorised to access and use the system,

Preferably the system is adapted to be accessed by a plurality of users over, at least, the Internet, through a web browser.

More preferably the transaction recording system may be adapted to extract customer transaction data from customer transaction data repositories comprising sources of customer transaction data including multiple and independent gateways and/or shopping carts or other oniine transaction repositories and wherein the analysis module is adapted to firstly aggregate stored customer data by reference to individual customers, and the source of the customer transaction data, and to create analysis data from aggregated customer transaction data that is analysable at the individual customer level, as well as at the level of the source of the customer transaction data.

Preferably the transaction recording system may adapted to extract customer transaction data from customer transaction data repositories comprising multiple and independent gateways and/or shopping carts or other oniine transaction systems using

(i) built-in methods of customer transaction data repositories

inciuding Webhooks or other IPN style services such as built-in XML or similar 'push' type notifications, or

(ii) by installing transaction capture mechanisms into the customer transaction data repositories.

More preferably the transaction analysis module is adapted to create analysis data comprising any one or more of the following data:

i. user data

ii. aggregated customer data by source

iti. individual customer data

iv. historical and trending data by customer or by source Preferably, the custom alert module is adapted to set alert thresholdsor at least one or more of the following:

i. total value of customer (per source or across sources) ii. average transaction per customer (per source or across sources)

Hi. total number of transactions(per source or across sources) iv, individual transactions above a certain dollar or other value (per source or across sources)

According to a second aspect of the invention there is provided a method for real time reporting and responding to online transactions, wherein the method is comprised of the foiiowing steps:

t. collecting user credentials and also receiving from a user, thresholds for future actions and alert notifications;

ii.iterativeiy performing the following steps (a)-(l)

a. collecting customer transaction data in real time from a third party system containing customer transaction data of the user

b. storing customer transaction data in a data repository;

c. analysing the stored customer transaction data to identify the

customer, and source of the transaction data;

d. aggregating stored customer transaction data with any existing stored customer transaction data;

e. analysing the aggregated customer transaction data to create analysis data comprising, at least, historical and customer profile data related to the customer's transactions;

f. formatting analysis data into forms appropriate for downstream

reporting, alerting and distributing;

g. storing formatted analysis data in a data store;

h. making stored formatted analysis data available to users including by way of reports;

i. analysing analysis data for thresholds;

j. sending notifications in response to thresholds triggered by analysis data; k. matching analysis data against customer data that resides the third party system; and

I. updating the third party system and/or systems using analysis data. Preferably, the method involves the added steps of first providing users of the system with a user status that determines whether the user is entitled to be engaged in the performance of the method, and the second added step of qualifying the customer transaction data by reference to user status where the data is quarantined in the data store if the user is not permitted to be engaged in the performance of the method.

More preferably the step of analysing the aggregated customer transaction data to create analysis data may include the creation of data by reference to the source of the customer transaction data such that data can be reported and acted on downstream by reference to individual customers or by reference to the source of customer transaction data.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

Fig. 1 is a schematic showing the parties to a conventional online

transaction;

Fig. 2 is a flowchart showing the sequence of events involved in a

convention online transaction;

Fig. 3 is a schematic of the modular system and associated parties systems according to a first aspect of the invention Fig. 4 is a schematic showing the steps of the method comprising the second aspect of the invention, in respect of the system of the first aspect of the invention, using a single third party system; Fig. 5 is a schematic showing the steps of the method comprising the second aspect of the invention, in respect of the system of the first aspect of the invention but where there are multiple third party systems and multiple online customer data repositories; Fig. 6 is a computer screenshot of a dashboard presented to the user of the system;

Fig. 7 is a computer screenshot of a report generated in respect of a group of customers belonging to a user of the system;

Fig. 8 is a computer screenshot of a report generated in respect of a single customer belonging to a user of the system;

Fig. 9 is a computer screenshot of the facility for a user to create and edit groups;

Fig. 10 is a computer screenshot of the facility for a user to set up

custom alerts for a group;

Fig. 11 is a computer screenshot of the facility for the user of the system to associate a pre-configured destination system within a group Fig. 12 is a computer screenshot of the facility for a user of the system to import and/or expert all transactions for a group; and Fig 13 is a computer screenshot of the facility for a user of the system to analyse individual customer data aggregated across groups. BEST MODE FOR CARRYING OUT THE INVENTION

Fig. 1 depicts a prior art where a customer 0, using customer's PC 12 which includes a smartphone, internet tablet , laptop PC, desktop PC, server PC, or other device adapted to connect to the internet, rendering web/HTML content and receiving user input and displaying visual output) to access the online store of vendor 14 which includes reference to any party providing goods or services or who solicits and receives donations, and further, includes a reference to the vendor's system which is itself a reference to essentially a vendor's PC or server upon which the online store is served over the internet via appropriate communication and telecommunication devices), where both customer's PC 12 and vendor's system 14 are connected to a payment gateway system 16 via internet 18.

Fig. 2 depicts the steps involved in a conventional online transaction. It depicts the customer 10 selecting an item from an online store provided by the vendor's system 14, upon checkout, the vendor's system 14 passes the order to a payment gateway 16 such as Paypal which then enters into a secure session with the customer 10 through their PC 12. Once securely connected and the customer 10 authorises the payment to the vendor system 14, the payment gateway system 16 then debits and credits the customer 10, and vendors system 14's accounts respectively. The vendor's system 14 then actions the purchase by dispatching the ordered item or items to the customer 10.

Other less conventional online transactions include online donations where there is money involved or indeed may not involve any money at all including. For instance, the management of a large number of volunteers for services such as the rural fire protection service or the state emergency services or even a church group may involve sending out requests for availability at a particular time and wherein recipients may agree to be involved in the proposed activity at that time by responding with their agreement. In such cases it would be of benefit to apply analysis and metrics to the volunteers records of involvement maintained by third party systems and send

communications or cause certain actions to take place with respect to those that have met certain thresholds. Other online transactions include advocacy action such as signing up for petitions or indication of interest in a particular campaign. To that extent, references to online transactions in this specification includes a reference to these non-financial online transactions. Further, references to customers in the specification are to be taken as references to customers of conventional online transactions, as well as participants in non- financial online transactions as described above.

Over the years, the number of online transactions has grown at a rapid rate with many corporate groups operating multiple online store offerings which offer customers the ability to pay for goods and services using a multitude of payment gateways that provide a means of payment that include access to major credit cards such as MasterCard and Visa. There is accordingly a significant amount of data residing in disparate systems operating across the internet that could, if harvested, collated, and provided to vendors, be used to provide new insights into the activities, trends, and transaction history of their customers.

Hitherto there has been no method or product available in the market which has been able to be deployed to gather data from these disparate sources and process the gathered data in real time, analyse it and provide new and valuable information about customer's or the vendor's business, and to provide automated marketing services based on user definable thresholds.

Fig. 3 shows a provider's system 20 for real time reporting and responding to online transactions is depicted {where a reference to a provider is a reference to the provider of the inventive system and method to vendors who wish to utilise the system and method to obtain valuable insight into their customers and also encompasses vendors, who themselves purchase or develop the system and method for their own use within their organisation to monitor only their own customers). Broadly, the invention, the provider's system 20, is depicted in Fig. 3 in association with a customer 10 who has a PC 12, a telephone 48, and a physical address 50, as well as a vendor 14 who provides a platform for performing online transactions such as a web store and a payment gateway system 16 such as Paypal which acts as the intermediary between the vendor's system 14 and the customer's PC 12.

Fig. 3 also shows multiple third party systems to which the provider's system 20, integrates. These include (i) email provider 38 which provide services in respect of sending and monitoring email campaigns such as

MaiiChimp, (ii) SMS delivery centre 40 for sending SMS messages and other similar telecommunication messages sent via telecommunications transmitter 44, (iii) telephone call centre 42 for communicating by telephone, with the customer's telephone 48, and (iv) mail centre 46 for sending printed materials and other physical items to a customer's physical address 50. Third party systems have in the past, not been involved in performing online transactions themselves.

The provider's system 20 has for the first time, allowed analysis of the online transactions an example of which would be to target specific customers through the use of an email campaign manager 40 to send thank you type emails immediately after the customers make a donation over a certain dollar threshold, or in the case of an online store, when purchases are made that exceed a dollar threshold, or indeed if any particular item or particular group of items are sold to customers which is being monitored by the vendor 14. In such cases the system and method of the invention would provide a notification alert to the user or customer or other preconfigured or identified recipient of the system that such a transaction has occurred and would also update third party email provider 38 such as MaiiChimp™ such that upon receiving notification that a particular transaction or other threshold is met, the user of the system can log into their email provider 38 which has been updated to include updated information, and send communications directly in response to the information contained in the notification. In other cases mail houses 46 may also send out communications containing similar communications or even vouchers or other marketing material. In both cases the extra step of communicating with the customer in real time as a result of the provision of the real time alert notifications, increases and extends and improves the experience of engaging in an online transaction. This improvement in the experience results in overall more online transactions being conducted when the provider's system 20 is utilised.

Referring to Fig. 3, the provider's system 20 is comprised of the following components: (i) a data store 22, (ii) a communications module 24 and (iii) a specially adapted information processing unit 26 which is under the control of computer program code or software. Essentially the method of the present invention is designed to be implemented on a server, connected to the internet which has loaded onto it software which adapts the server to serve the provider's system software/website over the internet such that it can be accessed by a plurality of vendor users through a World Wide Web browser such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Chrome. In alternate

embodiments, users of the provider's system 20 (which would generally be staff or employees of a vendor 14) may access the provider's system 20 by way of standalone software which is loaded onto a user's PC or indeed may be provided preloaded into firmware of a dedicated device such as an internet tablet that has integrated into its firmware or operating system, the provider's system 20 of the present invention or software which adapts the device to be able to communicate with and interact with the provider's system 20.

Information management unit 26 is adapted to perform certain functions by way of the inclusion of programmed sub-modules which are depicted in Fig. 3. These include a transaction recording module 28, a transaction analysis module 30, a custom alert module 32, a reporting module 34 and a distribution module 36.

The transaction recording module 28 is used to capture and store customer transaction data comprising individual customer transactions as well as capturing the source of the customer transaction data. Customer

transactions data would normally be maintained in payment gateway systems 16 such as Paypal, or the data may also be maintained in one of the various bespoke and commodity shopping carts/online stores that are maintained by vendors to sell their own products and/or services.

Generally, the customer transaction data is accessed by using either built-in methods of the customer transaction data repositories including

Webhooks or other IPN style services such as built-in XML or similar 'push' type notifications. Alternatively, in the case of bespoke and commodity shopping carts/online stores that are maintained by vendors 14 to sell their own products and/or services, by installing transaction capture mechanisms into the vendor's 14 bespoke and commodity shopping carts/online stores.

Whichever of these methods is used, an API key for the provider's system, where the key is unique to the source and user account, is attached to the transaction data being transmitted to the provider's system. The transaction recording module 28 also records the collected data for later use in the separate transaction analysis module, using the provider's unique API key to identify the source of the transaction data and also the user account by association of the unique key with a user's account in the provider's system.

In embodiments of the system which are adapted for multiple users (which are likely to be different vendors who all subscribe to the provider's system) the transaction recording module also qualifies each individual transaction by checking that the user account and capture requirement is current and authorised by the system for analysis and reporting. If the user account status indicates that the user is not entitled to access and use the system, the data captured by the transaction recording module 28 is stored in a quarantined compartment of the data store and is not made available to the transaction analysis module 30 for further processing until such time as the status changes.

The transaction analysis module 30 is used to analyse stored customer transaction data to identify the customer or customers and source of the transaction data, in the case where there is no aggregated customer

transaction data, the stored transaction data provided by the transaction capture module is stored as aggregated customer transaction data, and in the case where there is existing stored aggregated customer transaction data gathered in previous data collection iterations performed by the transaction recording module 28, the transaction analysis module 30 aggregates the stored historical customer transaction data with the stored customer transaction data passed to transaction analysis module by the transaction recording system 28.

The transaction analysts module then analyses the aggregated customer data which is where insights into the customers or the vendor's business (sources of data or "groups" are usually by reference to a single vendor business or webstore) can be identified. This analysed data is then formatted and stored for use by the remaining modules as described below. Examples of the sort of data that would be included in analysis data include:

i. user data

ii. aggregated customer data by source

iii. individual customer data

iv, historical and trending data by customer or by source The custom alert module 32 is where users of the provider's system 20 can set certain thresholds which trigger the doing of certain things if the threshold is identified in the stored analysed data. Once the thresholds are set they are associated with certain actions including sending notifications or alerts to the user or customer or other preconfigured or identified recipient. The sorts of thresholds users can set include but are not limited to:

i. total value of customer {per source or across sources); ii. average transaction per customer {per source or across sources);

iii. total number of transactions {per source or across

sources);

iv. individual transactions above a certain dollar or other value

(per source or across sources).

It is the function of the custom alert module 32 to monitor the stored and formatted analysed data for instances of the thresholds being met. In the event they are met, the custom alert module 32 sends the preconfigured

communication such as an alert sent to a user or customer or other

preconfigured or identified recipient.

The distribution module 36 is tasked with initiating data transfer to a third party system, located on the internet (or similar network). Given that it is a third party system, and that the user and provider of the provider's system 20 do not have any control over how the third party system is structured, it can be a difficult task to undertake matching of possibly incomplete data to customer records existing within the third party system. It is a task of the distribution module 36 to be able to first create an authorised association with, and link to, a plurality of third party systems. Once a link is created with the third party's system, usually by way of API that allows access to the stored database of information, the provider's system then uses the customer email address or similar identifier which has been passed through from the originating transactions to automatically match the data, which the distribution module 26 derives from the formatted and stored analysis data and that is being pushed across to the third party system, against existing customer records in the third party system 38. During the process of matching data the distribution module 36 updates or creates fields in the third party system 38 by way of published API or as discussed in more detail further below The invention also incorporates a reporting module 34 which allows a user of the provider's system to query the provider's system data store 22 where all stored information is retained in the system whereupon the reporting module 34 performs any analysis of the stored data and formats the data ready for display, printing or further transmission of the reports to the user.

Fig. 4 depicts some of the steps of one iteration of the second aspect of the invention, that being a method for real time reporting and responding to online transactions. The method is effectively divided into two stages, set up and monitoring/general use.

The steps involved setting up the provider's system 20 include the following: i. collecting user credentials for customer data repositories associated with the user

ii. receiving from a user,

a. thresholds for future actions; and

b. modes for the sending alert notifications; and c. directions to the provider's system to match and update information in third party system/s Once the user is set up on the provider's system 20, the monitoring/general use method can be employed in which the following steps are employed, some of which are depicted in Fig. 4:

d. step 54- collecting customer transaction data which

includes the customer transactions and the source of the data, in real time, from a third party system such as a payment gateway 16 containing customer transaction data of the user;

e. step 56- optionally in the case where the user is one of many users of the system and/or where access to the system is limited to active subscribers, qualifying the transaction data for further analysis, reporting, alerting or distributing of data by reference to the users status (that is, where the status is current or active, the transactions are qualified);

f. step 58 - storing customer transaction data in a data store where it is available for further processing, and in the case where the user is one of many users of the system and/or where access to the system is limited to active subscribers and where transactions are qualified, storing customer transaction data as either ready for on processing in the case of qualified transactions, or quarantined from further processing in the case of unqualified transactions;

g. step 60 - analysing the customer transaction data to

identify the customer, and source of the transaction data; h. step 62- aggregating collected customer transaction data with any previously collected customer transaction data; step 64- analyse aggregated customer data to obtain analysis data comprising at least historical and customer profile data related to the customer's transactions step 66 - directing the analysis data for downstream processing in at least one of the following sub-routines;

I. Sub-Routine A - Reporting

a. receiving from a user a selection of the aggregate customer data for reporting b. step 76 - formatting analysis data into forms appropriate for downstream reporting including any one or more of the following:

c. step 78 - providing a view of selected customer transaction history and analysis data

d. step 80 - providing a view of complete customer transaction history and analysis data;

e. step 82 - in the case where customer data is derived from multiple data sources, providing a view of at least one of the plurality of sources transaction history and analysis data; f. step 84 in the case where customer data is derived from multiple data sources, providing a view of all of the plurality of sources transaction history and analysis data

II. Sub-Routine B - Custom Alerts

a. Step 68 analysing analysis data for thresholds

b. Step 70/92 sending notifications in response to thresholds triggered by analysis data

III. Sub-Routine C - Distribution

a. Step 72 - matching analysis data

against customer data that resides the third party system

b. Step 74/92 - sending and updating the third party system and/or systems using analysis data

In the embodiment of Fig. 3, there is only one email provider 38, namely Campaign Monitor, as well as only being one customer 10 and one vendor system 14 for serving the online store. This is a simple embodiment of the invention.

The invention becomes more powerful for its users in the set of circumstances where there are more than one online store or websites under the control of a vendor, or where vendors can opt into a system whereby its data is aggregated along with other vendors' customer data. By using the invention, customers can be tracked across and between online stores, irrespective of payment method as each transaction is analysed and identified back to the individual customer. Fig. 5 depicts a further embodiment of the invention in which there are multiple customers, multiple sources of customer transaction data, and multiple third party systems. In particular, Fig. 5 depicts two customers, customer A 100 and customer B 102. Customer A 100 is a purchaser of goods and services from webstore 104 along with Customer B 102. Customer A is also a donor on a not for profit donation website 03, and is also a participant in a non-financial online transaction website 106.

Webstore 104, not for profit donation website 103 and non-financial online transaction website 106 aii use separate means for fulfilling the various online transactions. Webstore 103 uses Paypal™ 108 ( a payment gateway), for receiving payments, not for profit website 103 uses donation or payment gateway 107 for receiving donations, and non-financial online transaction website 06 uses the gateway 110 for recording the attendance or activity of Customer A.

It is not necessary that the gateway or online store back end be separate from the webstore or webfront. Indeed they may be separate parts of the one system or indeed, may represent a single system. What is important is that each is a source of customer data.

Also depicted in Fig. 5 are five third party service providers 111 , 112, 114, 116 and 118, all interacting with the provider's system 20 through user 52 who is retailer or vendor responsible for the three websites 103, 104 and 106. In the case depicted in Fig. 5, customer A who shops or donates or participates on online sites 103, 104 and 106 has their transaction data aggregated even though the data is stored in three separate systems. Further, the user 52 of the provider's system 20 is able to send email communication or action other activities to customers via any number of third party providers 11 , 112, 114, 116 or 118. Figs. 6 to 12 depict computer screen shots taken on computers that have software loaded onto them that adapts them to perform aspects of the system and method of the present invention.

Fig. 6 depicts the user's dashboard being a component of the user interface of the system. This is the interface that allows a user (as opposed to the provider) of the system to monitor online customer transactions. Specifically the user's dashboard provides at a glance a graphical representation of the total transaction activity for ail groups 200 where a group is defined by transaction origin that is, all customers from a particular data source, such as a payment gateway or online store or website generally are grouped together in a group for the purposes of the invention.

Fig. 6 a!so depicts an export facility 202 for exporting all transactions related to the currently presented graphical representation, in an industry standard format, CSV formatted text.

Fig. 6 also depicts a list of groups 204 which are monitored by the system of the invention. In this instance, the system 20 is adapted to aggregate online transaction data from multiple sources. Each group is a source of customer data and can be managed and reported separately as will be seen by reference to Fig. 7 but also reported aggregated as in the case of graphical representation 200 which is created from data aggregated across groups (sources of customer data). Fig. 6 also depicts custom alert facility 206 for noting active custom alerts that have been preconfigured during a preconfiguration phase, and account details panel 210 for indicating to the user the status of the user's account on the provider's system 20.

Fig. 7 depicts a computer screenshot of a report for an individual group.

It includes a total transaction activity graph 220 for the selected group, a facility to export all transactions 202 for the currently presented view, a list of the most recent transactions 222 for the group with a facility to display more

transactions, total transaction statistics 224 for the group, list of customers 226 comprising the top 20% of sales, donations or transactions by value or by some other determinant such as participation rate, and transaction statistics 228 for the customers identified in the list of top customer 226.

Users of the provider's system 20 are able to select individual customers 12 for more detailed information which is depicted in Fig. 8 in which a graphical representation 240 is provided which shows at a glance the history and quantity of online transactions the individual customer has been engaged in within a particular group (which can be contrasted with the view depicted in Fig. 13 which represents the individual customer's transactions across the different groups it is a member of as will be detailed further below). The individual customer view shown in Fig. 8 also provides an export facility 202 as in the other screens, as well as a list of their most recent transactions 242 and total transaction statistics 244.

Fig. 9 is the group and destination configuration screen of the registered user's interface served to the user's system by the provider's system 20. In this screen the user can add, delete or modify groups in a group configuration panel 260 or add, delete or modify destination third party systems such as MatlChimp 264 through the destination system configuration panel 262. Creation of a group within the provider's system generates a unique provider's system API key that will be associated with a transaction source such as the payment gateway 16 and associated with the transaction data coming from that source, to allow the provider's system 20 to identify transactions against a specific point of origin and User account.

Fig. 10 shows a custom alert configuration screen in which the following is depicted: a list of existing custom alerts 280, an indication of the number of custom alerts available for configuration 288, the type of value or money to be tracked 284 and the recipient s for notification 286. Fig. 10 has been depicted by reference to an alert for a specific customer group (or data source). In particular it is set to alert the user when any individual customer within a group hits a certain target, in this case a dollar amount. However it is possible, using the present invention, to set an alert that is triggered by the analysis data which is aggregated across groups. That is, it is possible to set an alert for instance if a customer spends more than $100 across multiple groups (sources webstores/websites). Alternatively it is possible to set alerts on a whole of group level say for instance, once payments in aggregate within a group reach a particular threshold or dollar value.

Fig. 11 shows a screen of the group destination configuration options made available by the provider's system 20 to users accessing the system through a networked computing device. It shows a list 300 of existing destination systems that have been configured for the group or groups, and a list of pre-configured destination systems to which the user has permission to add information which are not yet associated with the group.

Fig. 12 illustrates the ability for the User of the provider's system 20 to both export 202 all transactions for a group or to import 320 transactions for a group where these transactions may be historical information exported by another system and imported to provide historical information for aggregation and reporting by the provider's system 20. Again, whilst it has not been depicted, the facility also extends to importing and exporting aggregated data comprising data from multiple groups.

Using the system of the present invention which is adapted to aggregate data from multiple sources, it will now be possible for customers themselves to gather information regarding their own online purchases and aggregate such data for their own use, including the offering of their aggregated and analysed data to marketers, for a fee or in exchange for some other item or service of value. Such systems and methods may be adapted such that the customer is the user co-ordinating the collection of their own customer data from various sources including purchases and non-financial transactions such as

consumption of electricity made offline such as their utility suppliers including electricity suppliers. In such a system an individual, household or group could track their overall or net energy consumption from disparate sources, e.g.

home, office, community involvement. In a customer centric embodiment, the user/customer would be able to gather sources of information from their own PC or other computing devices which may contain data pertaining to

transactions conducted by the customer/user which would then be uploaded into the system 20 from the customer's PC 12. Such customer centric embodiments could also include custom alerts and reporting configured only for use by the customer and not the vendor or retailer including triggers for total customer expenditure or other threshold values.

In addition to customer centric embodiments of the invention, the system and method of the present invention may also be utilised in virtual communities defined by the individual's sign up to something like a Facebook group, or through the definition of a virtual community based upon the intersection of various purchase / donation / participation patterns. For example one could imagine a virtual community being defined within the provider's system 20 based upon an intersection of a purchase threshold plus a particular donation and membership of a community organisation like a local football club. The system could generate an alert based upon aggregate analysis for the virtual community and not just the individual purchaser or retailer. Although the invention has been described by reference to conventional online transactions carried out by a vendor 14 and a payment gateway 16, it would be clear to the person skilled in the art that the invention is not so limited, INDUSTRIAL APPLICABILITY

The invention herein disclosed has application in the field of financial services and payment gateways, online reporting, and donation management.

Claims

CLAIMS:

1. a system for real time reporting and responding to online transactions, wherein the system is comprised of a data store, a communications module, and an information processing unit wherein the information processing unit is under the control of computer program code which provides for:

a) a transaction recording module for:

i) capturing customer transaction data comprising individual

customer transactions and a record of the source of the transactions; ii) recording the customer transaction data as stored customer

transaction data for analysis by a transaction analysis module;

b) the transaction analysis module for:

i) analysing stored customer transaction data to identify the

individual customer or customers and source of the transaction data; ii) in the case where there is no aggregated customer transaction data, storing in the data store the stored customer transaction data passed to the transaction analysis module by the transaction recording system as aggregated customer transaction data, and in the case where there is historical or existing aggregated customer transaction data stored in the data store, updating the aggregated stored customer transaction data with the stored customer transaction data passed to the transaction analysis module by the transaction recording system, and;

iii) analysing aggregated customer transaction data to create

analysis data;

iv) formatting and storing analysis data for downstream use by:

(1) a distribution module;

(2) a reporting module; (3) a custom alerts module;

c) the distribution module for:

in) updating or creating fields within the third party destination

system using the analysis data

d) the reporting module for:

i) receiving from the user, requests for report data;

ii) extracting user requested data from analysis data that was

created and/or updated by the transaction analysis module iii) formatting report data;

iv) displaying, printing or transmitting the report data to the user; e) the custom alert module for:

iii) causing notifications to be sent if alert thresholds have been met.

2. The system of claim 1 wherein the system is adapted to be used concurrently by a plurality of users and wherein each user is assigned an account and account status and wherein the transaction recording module is adapted to first qualify each individual transaction by checking that the user account status entitles the user to access and use the system and where in the case of users with an account status that does not qualify them to access and use the system, the customer transaction data captured by the transaction capture module is stored in the data store as quarantined customer transaction data that only becomes accessible to the transaction analysis module once the customer transaction module has identified that the user's account status has changed to a status which is authorised to access and use the system

3. The system of claim 2 wherein the system is_adapted to be accessed by a plurality of users over, at least, the Internet, through a web browser.

4. The system of claim 3 wherein the transaction recording system is adapted to extract customer transaction data from customer transaction data repositories comprising sources of customer transaction data including multiple and independent gateways and/or shopping carts or other online transaction repositories and wherein the analysis module is adapted to firstly aggregate stored customer data by reference to individual customers, and the source of the customer transaction data, and to create analysis data from aggregated customer transaction data that is analysable at the individual customer level, as well as at the level of the source of the customer transaction data.

5. The system of claim 4 wherein the transaction recording system is adapted to extract customer transaction data from customer transaction data repositories comprising multiple and independent gateways and/or shopping carts or other online transaction systems using

(i) built-in methods of customer transaction data repositories

including Webhooks or other IPN style services such as built-in XML or similar 'push' type notifications, or

6. The system of claim 1 wherein the transaction analysis module is adapted to create analysis data comprising any one or more of the following data:

i. user data;

ii. aggregated customer data by source;

iii. individual customer data;

iv. historical and trending data by customer or by source.

7. The system of claim 1 wherein the custom alert module is adapted to set alert thresholds for at least one or more of the following:

iii. total number of transactions(per source or across sources) iv. individual transactions above a certain dollar or other value

(per source or across sources).

8. A method for real time reporting and responding to online transactions, wherein the method is comprised of the following steps:

i. collecting user credentials and also receiving from a user, thresholds for future actions and alert notifications;

ii. iteratively performing the following steps:

a. collecting customer transaction data in real time from a third party system containing customer transaction data of the user b. storing customer transaction data in a data repository;

c. analysing the stored customer transaction data to identify the

customer, and source of the transaction data; d. aggregating stored customer transaction data with any existing stored customer transaction data;

f. formatting analysis data into forms appropriate for downstream reporting, alerting and distributing;

g. storing formatted analysis data in a data store;

i. analysing analysis data for thresholds;

j. sending notifications in response to thresholds triggered by

analysis data;

k. matching analysis data against customer data that resides the third party system; and

I. updating the third party system and/or systems using analysis data.

9. The method of claim 8 wherein the method involves the added steps of first providing users of the system with a user status that determines whether the user is entitled to be engaged in the performance of the method, and the second added step of qualifying the customer transaction data by reference to user status where the data is quarantined in the data store if the user is not permitted to be engaged in the performance of the method.

10. The method of claim 8 wherein the step of analysing the aggregated customer transaction data to create analysis data may include the creation of data by reference to the source of the customer transaction data such that data can be reported and acted on downstream by reference to individual customers or by reference to the source of customer transaction data.