How PostalOne! Handles Sibling and Split Trays

There are rules and limitations when submitting Mail.dats to PostalOne! that mailers should be aware of since they will impact how siblings and split trays are handled by PostalOne!.

PostalOne!’s qualification reports do not show sibling containers. There is an overflow tray indicator that could be used to show a tray has siblings but it is not particularly useful to verifiers and it often will not work. For it to work all such trays would have to be marked before the initial upload to PostalOne!. This is unlikely for many mailers resulting in a situation where sometimes the indicator will work and other times it will not. This will create confusion for both the verifier and the mailer so we avoid that situation by not using the indicator. Instead we have found it much better for mailers to supply a copy of either DAT-MAIL’s Trays on Pallets report or the Enhanced Qualification Report if their verifier needs help with verifying your sibling trays and pallets. Though PostalOne! is supposed to reduce paperwork, there is often the need for supplemental documentation and this is one such case.

Today, PostalOne! does not include sibling containers in postage statement container counts of non-MLOCR jobs. This is a defect (ETR) that should be fixed at some point. It is possible that some BMEU’s may ask mailers who bring their mail to them to supply not just a DAT-MAIL report like the Enhanced Qualification Report or the Trays on Pallets report but also a postage statement created by DAT-MAIL that shows the siblings in their counts. This is particularly true if the mailing is drop shipped and is accompanied by 8125 forms. DAT-MAIL’s 8125’s will always include the siblings created by the Tagger so it may help the verifier to show them statements whose container counts will match the 8125.

When a mailer is ready to start using the Tagger on eDoc presented jobs, we recommend they talk to their verifier first about what kind of supplemental documentation they would like, if any, that would account for these added containers. It may help to print a trays on pallets report or an enhanced qualification report on a job you have added siblings to in order to show them what it is you can provide. In some cases, the verifier may not require any supplemental documentation.

Recommendations for Mailers that will Submit Siblings to PostalOne!

Do not upload your Mail.dats to PostalOne! with “ready-to-pay" containers which will generate a postage statement until one of the following has taken place:

You have added all of your siblings and imported them into DAT-MAIL.
You need to pay postage and must submit a Mail.dat with ready to pay containers. If the payment is for a partial mailing, make sure not to pay for containers that are not being mailed or you won’t be able to add siblings to them later.

You can keep adding siblings to mailings that have been partially paid, as long as the containers that are going to be linked to siblings have not yet been paid either. If DAT-MAIL imports data from the Tagger and sees that a container that requires a sibling has already been paid, it will not attempt to add the sibling and will report this as an error in the log that can be viewed from the “Whittier Tagger” menu in “Other Programs”.

Recommendations for Mailers that will Submit Split Trays to PostalOne!

Split trays do show up on the USPS qualification report which means you cannot submit any file to PostalOne! until all split trays tags have been printed and imported into DAT-MAIL. For mailers that either do not do partial mailings or produce the entire mailing before the first day’s mail is paid for, this will be no problem. Just wait until DAT-MAIL has added the new trays before your first submission.

If your mail production takes place over a number of days and you are also mailing over a number of days, you can still add new trays for these splits. When DAT-MAIL sees that a tray that was split was already submitted to PostalOne! but is still unpaid, it will add a sibling instead of splitting the tray.

But if you are doing the mailing over a number of days and splitting trays each day, you can handle this as follows. Before you do your first submission to PostalOne! which should be for the trays you are mailing on the first day, generate statements in DAT-MAIL for only the trays that are mailing that day, then split the Mail.dat so that the day’s mail shows up as a separate Mail.dat. That is what you submit the first day. The next day you open the job with the rest of the containers and repeat the process so that each day you are submitting a separate Mail.dat Job for that day’s mail. This will allow you to keep splitting trays right up to the completion of the job. This will work very well for drop shipped mailings in which all the mail for a group of entry facilities is being mailed each day. In this case the splitting of the Mail.dats will not impact the qualification of the rates claimed nor will ever run the risk of trying to split a mailing across a pallet (which we do not allow).

Follow these guidelines and you can enjoy the benefits of tray splitting on the largest mailings. Your trays will show up on both PostalOne! qual reports and statements so no supplemental documentation should be needed and your mail can be handled by DSMS consolidators and third party copal providers.

Limitations of the Current PostalOne! Submission Process

The above guidelines are based on current limitations in how PostalOne! works. This may change over time so these limitations are worth documenting. PostalOne! generates its qualification report only from the first Mail.dat upload. Once created, this qualification report can never be changed. Trays cannot be split after PostalOne! has received an original submission because the new trays cannot be added except as siblings. Siblings can be added right up to the time the original trays and pallets are paid, but not after payment.