Generally, of all the discount services that are available from the Post Office in terms of letters, this offers the highest level of discounts, however it does come with a caveat that there is a lot more involved on your end in order to access these discounts.
The other thing to consider is that this is a bulk mail service and is only available for mail volumes of over 300 items in the same postal category ie small letters or large letters of the same weight all sent on the same day. So for many businesses it simply may be impractical to use this service on a daily basis as there are extensive software requirements as well as other preparation requirements.
Essentially what we are saying is that unless your business is sending a large volume of mail ie more than 1000 letters per day, then this service is more than likely not for you.
What Is Pre Sort Mail?
You may have noticed that when you receive a letter through the mail there is a faint orange barcode printed on it by the Post Office. Essentially what is going here is that the address on the mail is being scanned and turned into electronic data and matched up against a database that the Post Office keeps of every deliverable address in Australia called the Postal Address File (PAF). They print this barcode on the envelope so they can then put them through their high speed sorting equipment and basically work out which Post Office the letter needs to end up at for distribution.
If this is confusing to you, think of when you receive a phone bill or bank statement, above your home address there is a barcode which is exactly the same thing as those orange marks except they are printed on the businesses end, not by the Post Office.
So, by printing the barcode the business is essentially making it easier for the Post Office to process the mail and being rewarded by cheaper postage rates.
How do I get the barcode on the mail?
There are several companies that have worked in conjunction with the Post Office to develop software which takes address data that you have either in spreadsheets or varying database applications and matches it up with the PAF and assigns a barcode to that address record. One such company is Data Tools and as an indication entry level software starts at around $700 per annum.
What other lodgement requirements are there?
There are a whole raft of lodgement requirements in order to access the pre sport service such as the size and width of the barcode marks that need to be adhered to in order to ensure that the Post Office scanning machines can read them. Rather than going through them all we suggest that if you are interested in exploring this option for your business that you check out the Pre Sort Letter guide that is available on the Post Office website.
What Sort Of Pre Sort Discounts Are Available?
Again, there are several levels of discounts available depending on how much of the Post Office’s “work” that your business does. To give an example, there is the Barcode Reside rate which is where you send more than 300 items of the same category anywhere in Australia, however if you were to sort this mail using your software into one of the Barcode Sort Plans or thought of another way group the mail into which “truck” it needs to end up on then you will be able to get a higher level of discount. In some cases this discount can equal or even exceed 25% of your postage costs.
What if I don’t send bulk mail regularly but still want to get Pre Sort Discounts?
So if you have irregular bulk mail, it does not make sense to invest in the software and infrastructure required to barcode your mail in house. So the option available to you is to outsource your bulk mailings. You learn more on when you should outsource your bulk mail by clicking here.
So, in summary the pre sort service is not for every business and perhaps you might be better off learning more about the Clean Mail service which has a much lower barrier to entry unless your business is sending a very large volume of mail.
As always we are available to answer all of your mail related questions and even they are outside the scope of our core services of PO Box Mail delivery we are happy to point you in the right direction. Please Click Here to get in touch with us or call us on 1300 624 562.
