Let’s review the benefits and varieties of choice available to your small business when shopping for a postage meter to boost your mailing efforts, including some important questions related to choosing if your company is ready to automate the mail effort and also the main features of a postage meter system.
Whether you send what you consider to be just a little amount of mail to be sent, a postage meter is an addition to just about any business. Metered mail is more professional looking, is more accommodating and can often help achieve tremendous savings. It also fortunately requires infrequent trips to the local post office if you have company building late day pickup.
A good measure on whether your business might benefit from a postage machine is if you have more than $50 per month in postage costs. The capability to being able to print correct postage on demand has also been shown to shrink office expenses. When evaluating the exact postage machine for your business requirements though can be confusing. To help, review the following:
1) What does the company payout every month on average in postage?
2) What is the volume, how many individual pieces of mail are sent on a daily basis?
3) Do you mail mostly basic sized letters, or are there a bulk of packages of inconsistent dimensions or weights?
How you answer these will assist you in figuring the features that are most necessary in choosing the right model postage machine for your small business.
Let’s take a quick tour of the basics of a pitney bowes. The meter itself is the very important aspect of the mail system. It takes the place of the physical separate stamp, printing what is known in postal lingo as the indicia, and also stores the old postage amount(s).
Note that you can’t purchase your postage meter, rather it must be leased. You can buy other parts of the overall system, {however,but} ownership of meters themselves is controlled by the federal government.
While most postage machines are similar in basic function and handle up to one thousand dollars in postage, and all models are able to prepare first class, priority, and express mail, and packages. Postage machines may also be implemented for reduced bulk mail, but this needs a permit from the US Postal Service.
Where pitney bowes postage meters begin to vary is in individual features.
In addition, digital machines add an added level of security by implementing the printing of a two dimensional bar code which identifies the sender as well as the intended receiver. Some digital postage machines are able to be updated electronically, keeping them refreshed with changing US Postal Service rates. Non-digital machines on the other hand depend a expensive upgrade to the chip inside when the rates inflate.
This is a basic overview of some of the big features of an automated postage machine system and I hope it aids you in your decision making process in determining what kind of machine might be right for your small business.
