DAT-MAIL™ - Undocumented Piece Audit Report -Setup & User Guide
Purpose
The purpose of this document is to provide setup and use instructions for DAT-MAIL’s Undocumented Piece Audit Report.
Introduction
The following United States Postal Service Industry Alert was sent to subscribers on April 29, 2021:
Seamless Acceptance/Full-Service Automated Verification Reminder
"The Postal Service is leveraging Full-Service Intelligent Mail to transition towards automated acceptance and verification processes that will replace the traditional manual verifications. As part of this process, the Postal Service provided advance notice in the May 8th 2020 Seamless Federal Register of its intent to require all mailers with an authorized Detached Mail Unit(DMU) to enroll in the Seamless Acceptance Program by May 1, 2021. DMU Mailers not enrolled in the Seamless Acceptance Program by that date may be required to submit commercial mailings at a designated Business Mail Entry Unit (BMEU). BMEU-entered full-service mailings will be verified using only automated sampling and verification processes beginning July 1, 2021."
Despite the Federal Register Notice on January 8, 2020, with a proposed rule to make Seamless mandatory for mailers in 2021, many mailers were reluctant to participate in Seamless Acceptance. They were fearful of potential assessments for undocumented mail pieces. These assessments can be quite expensive. Unlike some of the other assessments passed onto the respective mail owners, assessments for undocumented pieces will usually come right out of the mail preparer’s pockets.
To assist our Clients, Window Book developed an Undocumented Piece Audit Report that can show you why you are getting undocumented pieces to avoid them in the future. In addition, it can help challenge Seamless Acceptance Undocumented assessments for pieces that should not have been charged.
Mailers can download mail quality CSV files that include undocumented piece information from the USPS Informed Visibility-MTR website, then import them into DAT-MAIL as part of running the Undocumented Report. This report uses both Mail.dat data and PostalOne! payment history data to categorize and summarize the probable causes for the undocumented pieces. It also exports its CSV file for all barcodes found in DAT-MAIL’s database to provide additional detail.
How Does It Work?
To fully understand the causes of undocumented pieces, any data a mailer has based on Mail.dat alone will not be enough. They will also need to know what exactly happened when they tried to pay for postage in PostalOne!. Window Book’s DAT-MAIL and PostalWeb products together capture all the data needed.
For example, a common cause of undocumented pieces happens when a mail clerk reverses a statement, but the mailer does not resubmit a replacement statement. If the mailer was only looking at Mail.dat data they would never see that was what happened, but if they add PostalOne! payment event data, it would be easy to identify.
DAT-MAIL maintains a database of a mailer’s Intelligent Mail piece barcodes and cross-references them to the job and container they belong to. It also maintains a cross-reference table of containers to PostalOne! releases where these containers are being paid.
Window Book’s PostalWeb Connector maintains a database of all PostalOne! payment events for each release sent to PostalOne! where postage is being paid. The report utilizes this data to give the mailer a unique and actionable understanding of what is causing their undocumented pieces by providing the statistics on identifiable causes and explaining probable causes in the report footnotes.
Benefits
DAT-MAIL’s Undocumented Piece Audit Report provides timely and actionable data on what is causing undocumented pieces to quickly resolve the problem and avoid undocumented pieces in future mailings.
If the last known payment status of a container is “Finalized”, the CSV file created provides the information that can be passed along to the USPS to challenge an undocumented piece assessment.