Not only are postage rates increasing again, but USPS delivery standards are also changing. As I understand it from this article, that could be good news or bad news, depending on how far you are located from your regional processing center.

If you are still printing bills in-house, you might want to pay particular attention to these changes.

What is changing?

If your local post office is located more than 50 miles from the regional processing center, mail will only be collected from your post office once each day, in the morning. This is a change from twice-daily pickups, with one in the morning and one in the evening.

This means that, unless you take your mail to the post office early in the morning, it won’t be delivered to the regional processing center until the day after you mail it.

Also, Sundays are no longer counted when calculating delivery times. This means if you mail your bills later in the week, it could add one additional day to the delivery time. For example, bills mailed on a Friday with a two-day delivery window (the best USPS has to offer!) will now be delivered on Tuesday rather than Monday.

Delivery times from your post office

If you’re interested in learning what delivery times are to different parts of the country from your local post office, use this transit time map from the Postal Service.

Choose “First-Class Mail Letters and Flats” from the Mailing & Shipping Services dropdown and enter your ZIP code in the Entry Point 5-digit ZIP Code box.

You might find it surprising, especially if you’re in a more rural location!

If you outsource

If you outsource the printing of your bills, this shouldn’t impact you, as most outsource printers are able to deliver the mail they send directly to the regional processing center, bypassing the local post office.

If you still print bills in-house

If you are still printing your bills in-house, this is just one more reason to consider outsourcing. In addition to reducing your workload and postage costs, faster delivery of the mail is another compelling reason to change.

If you’re interested in learning what the cost of outsourcing would be over what you are currently paying, this calculator will help.

Paper bill fees

As I mentioned in the last blog post, I’ve been researching paper bill fees and plan to write about them in the next Utility Information Pipeline. If your utility has imposed a paper bill fee, or considered it and decided against it, I would love to hear from you! Feel free to send me an email describing your experience with paper bill fees.

Are you operating as efficiently as possible?

Is your business office operating at peak efficiency? If it’s not, or you’re unsure, please call me at 919-673-4050 or email me at gary@utilityinformationpipeline.com to learn how a business review could help you improve your business office operations.

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