Skip Navigation

First-in, First-served Order Processing and Fulfillment Procedures

Answer ID
205

What are the United States Mint's standard processing and fulfillment procedures?

The United States Mint's order management system processes all orders on a first-in, first-served basis. First-in, first-served means that from the time a customer receives an order confirmation number, his or her order is processed in the sequence it was received. Inventory is immediately reserved for that customer and the customer's order begins the order management and fulfillment process.

  • Under its standard fulfillment operating environment, most orders are easily processed through completion on a first-in, first-served basis.
  • When a product is in a backorder status, as inventory becomes available it is assigned to the oldest orders first.
  • If an order has outstanding issues-such as credit card holds, household order limit violations, or address verification conflicts, the next orders in line can be fulfilled before the one with outstanding issues. Once the outstanding issues are resolved, the order is reinserted next in line. Accordingly, such reinserted orders will not be processed for shipment in the same sequence as their order numbers.
  • Each day, the order management system generates several "ship lists" which contain all of the orders in line that have been cleared for shipment. These orders can be broken into categories to gain efficiencies; however, within the categories, orders will be shipped in sequence.
  • Personnel at the fulfillment center package and prepare for shipping all orders on their designated ship list in the most efficient manner. After an order is completely packaged and prepared for shipment, it is then moved to the shipping team for carrier pick-up. If the product is moved to the carrier pick-up area, an e-mail ship confirmation will be sent to the customer with tracking information.
  • If, by the end of the day, all orders on the daily ship lists did not complete the fulfillment process, which is complete with the e-mail ship confirmation, those orders carry over to the next day. For example, if the daily ship list contained the next 3,000 orders in line, but the fulfillment center only completed to shipment 2,000 orders, the remaining 1,000 orders carry over to the next day.
Did this answer your question?
 
We would like to hear how we can improve this answer to better serve our customers.
This is for informational purposes only. You will NOT receive a response.

Kindly submit your feedback in the box below.

Please do not enter any personal identifiable information such as order numbers, phone numbers,
email addresses, etc. due to privacy and security issues. Thank you for your assistance.
*You must be at least 18 years old to submit feedback.
*Required