A new mail entry program is proposed to start in July which requires a bit of attention.

According to the USPS Mail Entry Roadmap, the postal service will start assessing mailers who consistently have errors in their advanced mail entry programs, such as full-service. While the date has not yet been published, we expect that the assessments will be live sometime this year, and it could happen as early as July. Here’s what you’ll need to know about these upcoming changes.

Will I be assessed?

The assessments are designed to only impact mailers who have substantial errors in their mail preparation and address quality. If you are following the rules of the programs that you participate in, it’s very unlikely that you will be assessed. However, the thresholds for errors can be rather restrictive in some cases so quality control checks will become more important. Here’s what to look for:

• If you use any of the mail classes that require Move Update processing, you’ll need to keep your unforwarded moves to under 0.8%.
• If you participate in Full-Service, there are 6 metrics USPS will check on your mailings. The error threshold for each varies from 2-5%.
• If you participate in eInduction, there are 6 metrics USPS will check on your mailings. The error threshold varies from 0-2%.
• If you participate in Seamless Acceptance, there are 8 metric USPS will check on your mailings. The error threshold varies from 0.3-2%.

How are assessments calculated?

Your “score” for each metric is calculated across all your mailings for a calendar month. If your errors are below the threshold for that metric, you will not be assessed. If your errors are over the threshold, you’ll be assessed for the difference. For example, the error threshold for mail piece uniqueness is 2%. If you mailed 100,000 pieces in a month, and had a 3.5% error rate for mail piece uniqueness, you’ll be assessed for 1.5% of the pieces for that month, or 1500 pieces.

How much will I pay?

The payment amount depends on the program you are participating in. For Move Update, the charge will be 7.3 cents per piece. For Full-Service, the amount of the Full-Service discount for those pieces will be assessed. Undocumented pieces, those missing payment or duplicates for eInduction or Seamless will be charged the average postage the mailer has paid over the same time period. Misshipped containers or pieces with nesting or sampling errors will be charged the difference in postage between the claimed rate and the appropriate rate.

Invoices will only be generated for totals of over $50. If your total invoice is less than that, the balance will be added to the next month until $50 is reached.

How can I check my mailing quality?

If you haven’t already, get familiar with your Mailer Scorecard. To access this tool, log in to the Business Customer Gateway, then go to Mailing Reports. In the Mailer Scorecard section, select your role in the mailing to view comprehensive reports for all of your mailings.

It’s important to monitor your Mailer Scorecard now, rather than waiting for the assessments to go into place. As you’ll see below, the most common errors are process problems, not one-off anomalies. By fixing your processes now, you’ll be able to avoid assessments when they are activated.

What errors should I watch for?

USPS has been looking at the data, and for the most part, mailers are well within the established thresholds. The mailers who are going over are failing spectacularly – going well over the thresholds. This seems to indicate that the best way to avoid long-term assessments is to make structural changes in your workflow. Once an error is corrected, the new process can prevent errors in the future. The known areas of concern are:

• Full-Service: By-For errors. This is most common error for mailers at this time. Full-Service mailers are required to supply a Mailer ID (MID) or Customer Registration ID (CRID) for both the Mail owner and Mail Preparer for each mailing over 5,000 pieces, and for all nonprofit mailings. There can also be issues if the same MID or CRID is used to identify both parties.
• Full-Service: Barcode uniqueness. The combination of your Mailer ID and the sequence number used in piece, tray and pallet barcodes must be unique for a 45 day period. A common reason for this error is when a mailer uses the same Mailer ID on multiple systems and doesn’t assign specific sequence number ranges to each system.
• eInduction and Seamless: Undocumented pieces. This is where USPS cannot match a piece or container to electronic documentation. USPS has found that most of these errors happen when a mailer takes their single-piece rate mail and places it on a physical postage statement, or just pays the full rate. The solution to this is to attach all mail pieces to electronic documentation.
• Move Update. While the error threshold is 0.8%, USPS is seeing only a 0.25% error rate. To avoid this costly assessment, we recommend running NCOALink on each job as it is processed.

How can I dispute an assessment?

Data is your best friend for disputing an assessment. Make sure you keep copies of the documentation you send to USPS, save barcode information in your mailing files, and have standard filing systems to allow for easy access. While there isn’t a prescribed format to dispute a specific measurement, having this data, along with the data found in your Mailer Scorecard, will be the first step. You can dispute the charge directly within the Business Customer Gateway.

While any change in postage can be a scary thing, postage assessments are the first time USPS has enacted postage charges after the mailing is accepted. Your best weapons against them are education and deliberate processes. If you’re experiencing scorecard errors, please contact us and we’ll be here to help.