Stop Printing Postage Statements

By Brad Hill
President

Have you ever published an issue where the page count on your postal documentation was higher than that of the paper itself? Answering ‘yes’ has become ever easier as mailing requirements and the complexity of supporting documentation have increased over time.

Today, it’s common for periodicals to submit two or more postage statements for every issue, requiring up to eight pages each. And for every postage statement there must be an accompanying Qualification Report, which can easily add another six pages or more. The 3553 CASS Summary adds one more page.

Although the Qualification Report and 3553 are not strictly required for each issue, they must be provided upon request. Add it up to see that it can easily take 30 pages of documentation or more just to mail a single issue! The good news: you don’t have to print even one page of it when you submit your documentation electronically.

More than 200 publications now submit all of their postal documentation online with a single click through Interlink Circulation, with dozens more adopting the method, officially termed eDoc, each week.

Operators prefer using eDoc because it saves time and eliminates the handoff to whoever would have taken hardcopy reports to the post office. Postal clerks like it because they don’t have to manually enter anything into their PostalOne! system, saving them time and eliminating human error.

Using eDoc also satisfies a requirement for overnight drop privileges, by providing required documentation to the USPS ahead of when the mail is inducted. Outside of overnight drop, however, there is no requirement for newspapers to submit postal documentation electronically.

Notwithstanding the advantages of using eDoc, it is important to understand that USPS’ backend system, PostalOne!, is under constant development, and efforts to enhance that system do occasionally break what had been working. When that happens, submitting hardcopy reports provides a straightforward fallback, and they also may be used to request refunds if the error caused USPS to miscalculate postage due. To identify and prevent such issues, I recommend comparing USPS-calculated postage due against a print preview of the postage statement in Interlink Circulation.

Moving to eDoc is surprisingly simple, and easier than ever since Interlink worked with USPS to eliminate the most common problem relating to PostalOne! — account setup. For the steps to begin using eDoc, see the related how-to article in this newsletter, or visit http://interlink.flywheelsites.com/?s=eDoc or contact our Client Solutions team for assistance at 888-473-3103.