System and method for processing electronic order forms

Abstract

The present invention provides a method and system for processing electronic sales transactions. In a preferred embodiment, an electronic merchandising system allows merchants to create electronic orders which are easily adaptable for different sales situations. The preferred electronic order comprises flexible blackboards which allow merchants to add sales information with what are called key-value pairs. In the preferred embodiment, the order is an object which contains at least one order blackboard and one or more item blackboards. In addition, the preferred embodiment contains an order processing module with multiple stages which process the order. The preferred stages include a product information stage, a merchant information stage, a shopper information stage, an order initialization stage, an order check stage, an item price adjust stage, an order price adjust stage, a shipping stage, a handling stage, a tax stage, an order total stage, an inventory stage, a payment stage and an accept stage.