Patent ID: 7406440

Claim:
A computer-aided method of collaborating on the terms and conditions of shipment and sale, the creation of documents and the tracking of an international shipment of goods and approving payment from a credit facility or demand deposit account, the collaboration including an exporter, an importer and an importer's bank, the method including: setting authorizations for international shipment participants to enter, view and approve aspects of data that record conditions and instructions for payment from the importer to the exporter, track progress of the international shipment participants toward meeting the conditions for payment, and allow the importer to electronically approve payment to the exporter by the importer's bank from the credit facility or demand deposit account; receiving and recording agreed conditions and instructions for payment; mapping fields of documents needed to evidence fulfillment to the data recording the conditions and instructions for payment and establishing synchronization rules for propagation of data among and editing of the mapped fields; applying the synchronization rules to propagate the data to the documents needed to evidence fulfillment using the mapping, wherein the synchronization rules restrict users' ability to override the propagated data fields once a document preparation state for the agreed conditions and instructions reaches a predetermined level; receiving documentation from the exporter or exporter's agent corresponding to fulfillment of the agreed conditions for payment, without need for bank evaluation of the documentation; electronically initiating an approval to pay following evaluation by the importer or the importer's agent that the conditions for payment have been fulfilled, modified or waived, the approval to pay corresponding to the instructions for payment; and receiving a status update confirming payment of the exporter.