multilatch 80 which is set to the active condition via the a2 input portion of ao 81 a bottom sensor 82 of collator 14 supplies an active signal over line 83 which is combined by a2 input portion of ao 81 with the output signal of and 73 this signifies that bin 35 is full and that carriage 33 is at the bottom of collator 14 hence collator 15 should now be used it should be noted that depending upon the length of belt 60 the bin full sensor 69 relationship to bin 35 can be altered by the construction of bin 35 such that the number of documents currently in collator 14 on belt 60 does not exceed the required capacity in the alternative bin 35 can be made larger to accommodate a greater number of documents to avoid a jam problem also the count control scheme described above can be employed intermediate article counter 75 in the collate mode also counts documents emitted by copier 10 at transfer point 12 sensing switch 50 supplies an indicating signal over line 51 to the a1 input portion of ao circuit 90 which is partially enabled by a collate signal received from control 20 gate 27 diverts the documents from noncollate tray 13 to travel along path 56 this is done initially via the a2 input portion of ao 45 setting gate latch 52 the ao 45 a2 input portion responds to the collate signal on line 91 and to the excess latch 92 being reset to supply the gate latch 52 setting signal as each document from path 56 enters collator 14 it is transported as above described down vacuum belt 60 to sorting carriage.