BILLING SYSTEM

摘要

Telecommunications or similar bills are prepared on diskette (22) in an optimal format for further processing, display, and analysis on a customer's personal computer (25). A telecommunications carrier (10) provides appropriately selected customer billing records (12) at the stage in the carrier's ordinary billing process after the carrier has completed all billing activities except actually printing a paper bill. In a first step, preferably performed on a large computer (14), the records are sorted, edited, and reformatted for further processing, and a variety of preprocessed summary reports and graphs are prepared for rapid retrieval on the customer's computer (25). In a second step, preferably performed on a network of smaller computers (20), the reorganized records and summary reports for each customer are separated, compressed, and recorded on diskettes (22) compatible with each customer's computer (25). A user application program on the customer's computer (25) displays and analyzes the billing information supplied on diskette and prepares new summary reports on demand.