Patent ID: 8185479

Claim:
A method in a shipment preparation computing system, comprising: facilitating preparation of a shipment of an order, by: receiving shipment preparation information from a bar code in a packing list, the shipment preparation information including a network resource identifier that identifies a code module that is remote and separate from the shipment preparation computing system, wherein the network resource identifier identifies a shipping protocol and is configured to cause the shipment preparation computing system to execute a shipment preparation module and to provide a portion of the network resource identifier to the shipment preparation module, the portion of the network resource identifier identifying shipment information and post-back information; communicating, based on the shipment information identified by the network resource identifier from the received shipment preparation information from the bar code, with the remote code module to obtain information for the preparation of the shipment of the order; and communicating, based on the post-back information identified by the network resource identifier from the received shipment preparation information from the bar code, with the remote code module to cause the remote code module to persistently store in a data repository status information about the preparation of the shipment of the order; and initiating the shipment of the order based on the shipment preparation information received from the bar code in the packing list.