NodeProfile Ubercart Checkout

I am using:
Drupal - 5.19
Ubercart - 1.7
Node Profile - 1.4

During the development of my current project, I have been asked to add a number of "registration" fields to the checkout process in ubercart. One of the options that I am looking at is using nodeprofile, which would then allow all reports etc to contain the values. The other option is to manually hard code these fields into a new table - but this does not allow for the profiles to be managed or enhanced at a later date with new fields.