1. Technical Field of the Invention
This invention pertains to a procurement and accounting system. More particularly, it relates to a system for grouping companies according to accounting system or rules, and for executing program logic and access to data by company grouping.
2. Background Art
An enterprise may vend its procurement and accounting services to other companies. This requires that the enterprise provide within its server accounting application code and data in support of the procurement activities of its customers. Heretofore, it has been required for the enterprise to provide a separate accounting application and database for each such customer. This results in very complex code development and maintenance requirements to support each customer. When the enterprise desires to update, for example, code implementing a particular accounting procedure, it must change the code for that procedure in the application for each customer company.
Further, for example, referring to FIG. 2, enterprise server application program logic 330 may include at statement 332 a call to a routine FINSUM.HTML 334. If the enterprise desires to provide, or is providing, procurement and accounting services to several customer companies which have different accounting rules which must be executed within FINSUM.HTML, then a separate server including separate application program logic 330 must be provided for each company.
It is an object of the invention to provide an improved system and method for providing accounting and procurement services to a plurality of customer companies.
It is a further object of the invention to provide a system and method requiring a single server and common application program logic and data storage to provide accounting and procurement services to a plurality of customer companies having different accounting rules.