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Intelligent Mail eDocs with PostalOne!®

By Jeffery Peoples

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 15Nov2008 Word count: 594 Viewed: 770 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

The USPS® is embarking on a major effort to improve the way postage and presort information is presented to them. The PostalOne!® system allows mailers to submit postage payment and presort information electronically for greater efficiency and accuracy. There are three ways to use PostalOne!: Mail.dat®, Web Services, and Postage Statement Wizard®. PostalOne! will link your mailing information electronically with Postal Service™ in order to expedite acceptance, verify payment systems, and eliminate paperwork. It also provides the Postal Service and mailers a way to manage their businesses more efficiently. In 2007 there were over 14 million postage statements entered by hand by the USPS. This is expensive to retype the data and less accurate than electronic submission. This data could be easily, accurately, and much more cost effectively entered via electronic submission to PostalOne!

Benefits from PostalOne!® eDocs
-Eliminate the paper forms!
-Be prepared for when this becomes required in the future
-Access postage data from a web browser
-Faster acceptance by USPS (they won't have to hand enter the data)
-Ensure accurate entry of your postage statement data into USPS systems
-Eligible to participate in Intelligent Mail® Full Service for greatest postage discounts in 2009

What ways can you submit the data for eDocs? PostalOne! Mail.dat upload PostalOne! Mail.dat automated Batch upload PostalOne! Web services (will change to Mail.XML in 2009) Postal One! Wizard for small jobs (less than 10,000 pieces and no qualification report)

What will you need? All you need is internet access and the ability to transmit the information about what you are mailing. To use Mail.dat upload, you need to have presort software that can produce a Mail.dat file set. The ability to be able to edit and update Mail.dat files becomes critical. For Web Services you need the postal data to be transmitted in a XML format. The Postage Statement Wizard is mainly for mailings that are not presorted, less than 10,000 pieces, and requires no supporting documentation for postal acceptance.

How do I register for PostalOne!? Follow the 3 easy steps outlined at the USPS PostalOne! website in order to get USPS approval and access to PostalOne!. This will give you a PostalOne! user name and password.

What happens next? After you have your PostalOne! username and password, you will then need to prove to yourself and the USPS that you can easily and accurately send the data the USPS needs for electronic documentation submission. The first step is to use the CAT section of PostalOne! CAT stands for Customer Acceptance Testing. It allows you to use pretend postage on pretend mailings to make sure you know the process and the postage amounts are correct. This is an important step as you do not want to use real postage while you are proving that you have your process correct.

After you are done with proving to yourself that you can use play postage on the CAT site, you will start parallel processing. This is where you present your mailing documents (3602s, 3600s...) in paper as you currently do, plus you upload to PostalOne! via Mail.dat or Web Services. This proves to the USPS that you are still presenting the correct paper documents and you are able to present the same data to the USPS with electronic documentation - eDocs. Parallel testing usually lasts at least 5 contiguous business mailing days and often more.

After you are done with parallel processing, you can stop producing the paper postage statements and related documentation. You will simply submit the data and view the data on the USPS PostalOne! site.

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