faq


 

The sections below cover some commonly asked questions in relation to AutoMail® and manifest mail processing.

 

AutoMail® Application
USPS
minusWhat is "Manifest Mailing"?

 

A few words about Mail Manifesting.
In the world of the USPS, Manifesting is the most preferred way for a mailer to process, print and present their mail to the Post Office.
 

Manifesting means many things.
As a noun, a Mail Manifest is a Report of Inventory.  It’s an exact and complete accounting of every item in a mailing whether the mailing contains 200 or 500,000 pieces.  The Manifest Report tells the Post Office everything it needs to know about a mailing.  It shows the total number of mail pieces in the mailing, their individual weight and thickness and the postage owed on each item along with the total owed.

 
As a verb, Manifesting is an electronic auditing process that calculates the weight and thickness of every item in a mailing and the postage owed on each.  It puts this into a Manifest Report the mailer uses to determine the total amount of postage owed which they pay using a check or from monies they keep in a prepaid postage account. 

 
Each Manifested Mail Piece features a preprinted indicia in the upper right corner of the envelope where a stamp or meter imprint usually appears. 
The Manifesting Process eliminates the need to meter the mail. 

 
This saves as much as 25% of the total cost of processing mail by reducing time and labor by one-third and eliminating expensive consumables such as meter ink.  It also eliminates the need for high capacity and costly metering machines.

 
AutoMail’s Manifest Module qualifies each mailing for the lowest legal rates on postage using a CASS Coding Engine for address quality; in addition, it uses a USPS, Gold Certified PAVE Engine for presorting. This process saves the mailer an additional 23% on postage costs. 

 
To earn these significant savings, the Manifest Module includes AutoMail’s unrivaled CASS Coding Engine that reviews each address in every mailing and assures the deliverability of all those that code properly.  CASS Coded Addresses are those that match the USPS’s most current list of all deliverable addresses, and this address database is contained in the CASS Engine.  The few addresses that don’t code are reported back to the mailer along with instructions on how to repair each address.  Pieces that don’t code properly can still be mailed, but they don’t qualify for postage discounts and must be mailed at full rate. 

 
Vigilant mailers correct these addresses as part of their on-going quality assurance program and keep their databases as accurate as possible.  This pays big dividends since it qualifies their mailings for the maximum amount of postage discounts offered by the USPS.