A process for increasing profits of a business engaged in the purchase of
large numbers of products and/or products of volatile pricing from
numerous vendors that operates to identify pricing errors, preferably
typically before payment, by automatically reviewing all invoices
typically in the order they are received to determine a best system price
for each line item of each invoice by reference to pricing factors such
as volume discount, seasonal pricing, price protection, commodity
pricing, competition pricing, and cash discount recorded in memory for
the subject item and reference to payment history data, accounts payable
data and invoice data. From the pricing factors and associated data, a
best system price is determined and compared to the invoice price for the
item so that pricing errors are automatically uncovered and, if
appropriate, flagged to identify the same as an exception for warning or
notification.