Patent ID: 6907315

Claim:
A method in a computing system for processing item orders, comprising: receiving a plurality of orders, each order having a destination and one or more items; organizing the received orders into order groups, the orders of each order group all having the same destination; for each order group: determining an availability time for each item of each order of the order group indicating how far in the future the item will become available for shipment; if all of the items of all of the orders of the order group have an availability time of zero, combining all of the orders of the order group into a single composite order for shipment; if fewer than all of the items of all of the orders of the order group have an availability time of zero: combining all of the items of all of the orders of the order group having an availability time of zero into a first composite order for shipment, and combining all of the items of all of the orders of the order group having an nonzero availability time into a second composite order for shipment.