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Mailer Scorecard

The Mailer Scorecard is a USPS online reporting tool that shows mailers the quality of their mail over a calendar month. USPS uses its results to decide when a mailer owes additional postage. Mailers use it to find quality problems and fix them.

Updated October 31, 202623 sources

What it is

The Mailer Scorecard is a dashboard of the letter and flat mailings a mailer sent USPS in one calendar month. It is a MicroStrategy report, one of the USPS reports that show data across all mailings for a business.

It serves Mail Owners and Mail Service Providers that take part in Full-Service. A Mail Service Provider acts on behalf of one or more Mail Owners. Full-Service mailers must submit their mailing information electronically.

On the Scorecard, the mailer is the eDoc submitter: the business that sent USPS a mailing's electronic documentation. That business can be the Mail Owner or the Mail Service Provider.

A mailer opens the Scorecard in the Business Customer Gateway, which has views for Mail Owners and for Mail Service Providers. Its reports summarize mail preparation quality and drill down to each error and warning.

How it works

The Scorecard adds up the verification errors in a month's mailings, updates the totals daily and measures them against thresholds. Errors under a threshold cost the mailer nothing.

The monthly cycle, from mailing to assessment.

  1. USPS verifies the month's mailings and counts errors until the 10th day of the following month.
  2. The month's verification results become final on the 10th day of the following month.
  3. On the 11th day, USPS generates postage assessment reports for each eDoc submitter's account.
  4. USPS emails the mailer's Verification Assessment Evaluator when it assesses postage.
  5. The mailer pays the assessment or requests a review within 10 business days.

The Verification Assessment Evaluator is a self-appointed contact at the mailer who receives the assessment email. When a Customer Registration ID has no evaluator, the email goes to its Business Service Administrator. When it has several, each one gets a notice.

The tabs

In May 2015, the Scorecard showed each month's data in four tabs.

  • Mailer Profile: the month's volume by mail class, eDoc types and total revenue.
  • Electronic Verification: results of Full-Service preparation, Move Update and presort checks on the eDoc.
  • eInduction: containers entered through eInduction and their validation errors.
  • Seamless Acceptance: verification results for mailers in Seamless Acceptance or Seamless Parallel.

The eInduction tab draws on the eDoc, the Intelligent Mail container barcodes and USPS scans. Its data appears the calendar day after the postage statement is finalized or the scan sampling event happens.

Views

The Mail Owner/Mail Preparer view shows a Mail Owner its own mailpieces across every Mail Service Provider that mailed for it that month. A Mail Owner sees only pieces, handling units and containers where the eDoc names it as the mail owner. A Mail Owner charged additional postage by its provider can check its own errors in this view.

The eDoc submitter view shows all mailings one Customer Registration ID submitted in a calendar month. A threshold exceeded in this view generates a postage assessment. To see which Mail Owners pushed a threshold over, a Mail Service Provider uses the Mail Owner/Mail Preparer view.

Each party's data depends on the By/For information in the eDoc, which names the Mail Service Provider and the Mail Owner.

Thresholds and colors

A mailer searches the Scorecard by month and Customer Registration ID, and can include several IDs in one report. A metric over its threshold shows its count and percentage in red. A metric over 50% of its threshold shows them in yellow.

The Scorecard shows every error for the month. The Mail Entry Additional Postage Assessment Report, the summary of the assessments a mailer owes, shows only the errors USPS invoices.

Move Update results

The Scorecard shows every Move Update error, both above and below the threshold. Its error percentage divides the First-Class Mail and USPS Marketing Mail pieces with outdated addresses by the pieces that must meet the standard. Green & Secure pieces with outdated addresses show as warnings, which are not assessable.

Testing STID errors

Full-Service Report Testing: Service Type Identifier (STID) Errors is a USPS test process for the STID errors the Electronic Verification tab reports. It lets a tester check that each reported STID error is a valid error.

A Service Type Identifier marks a mailpiece as Full-Service or basic, and sets how USPS handles it when it is undeliverable as addressed. The Scorecard logs STID errors at the container level.

The test checks that the number of STID errors matches between the summary and drill-down views. It covers the eDoc submitter, Mail Owner and Mail Preparer scorecards, and compares within the Mail Owner/Mail Preparer scorecards. It also checks that STID errors are logged correctly. Last, it checks that errors above a threshold show correctly on the Mail Entry Additional Postage Assessment Report and on a second report for internal users.

Requesting a review

A mailer can request a review of any postage assessment it disagrees with.

  1. Log in to the Business Customer Gateway with the account's username and password.
  2. On the gateway's home page, open Mailing Report in the Mailer Scorecard box.
  3. On the Mailing Reports page, open the Mail Entry Additional Postage Assessment Report.
  4. Choose the date range and the eDoc submitter's Customer Registration ID, then run the search.
  5. Open the ID's link for the Additional Postage Assessment Detail Report, with counts and amounts per error type.
  6. Review each assessment amount and the Additional Postage Due.
  7. Choose Request Review in the Action column next to the disputed assessment.
  8. Select the errors to review, enter the required information and submit.

The system saves the requester's name, phone number, email, date and reason. A Business Mail Entry Unit employee checks for review requests daily, and the assigned reviewer works with the evaluator until the review ends. USPS analysts decide by the end of that month, from their findings and the mailer's documentation.

Rules

Mailers must either pay the assessed amount upon receipt or request review of the postage assessment charges within 10 business days of the email notification.

A mailer that gets an assessment email must pay it or request a review within 10 business days.

However, they must provide documentation to support their claim.

A mailer that requests a review must provide documentation that supports its claim.

Once a review is requested the entire assessment is placed in a “review status” and the mailer will not be allowed to pay the assessment until the review is finalized.

A review puts the whole assessment on hold, and the mailer will not be allowed to pay it until the review ends.

Once the mailer receives review results for any errors under review, if an assessment remains it must be paid within three business days.

An assessment left after the review must be paid within three business days of the results.

Quality is measured across a calendar month and any pieces exceeding the 0.5% tolerance level will be assessed $.08 per piece.

Each month, Move Update pieces over the 0.5% tolerance will be assessed $.08 a piece.

What goes wrong

USPS charges nothing when the amount due is under $500 across Full-Service, eInduction and Seamless/Automated Verifications, and under $50 for Move Update.

Full-Service errors over the threshold remove the Full-Service discount from the pieces in error. A piece loses the discount only once, however many errors it has. Mailers are not responsible for assessments caused by a USPS system issue, such as a PostalOne! delay in posting eDoc.

When the share of eInduction containers in error is over a threshold at the month's close, USPS charges additional postage on the containers over it.

An assessment unpaid 10 business days after the first notice, or three business days after a dispute ends, is overdue. Analysts escalate overdue postage to their managers, and then to Revenue and Field Accounting for collection.

Terms

Mail OwnerMO
the business entity, organization, or individual who makes business decisions regarding the mailpiece content, directly benefits from the mailing, and ultimately pays for the postage on the mailpiece directly or by way of a Mail Service Provider
Mail Service ProviderMSP, Mailing Service Providers, Mailing Agent
a business entity, organization, or individual acting on behalf of one or more Mail Owners by providing mailing services for which the Mail Owners compensate the Mail Service Provider.
Electronic DocumentationeDoc, Electronic Documentation of Mailing Information, electronic document, electronic mailing documentation
an electronic postage statement that may also contain specific information about a mailing such as barcode information and qualification reports
Customer Registration IDCRID, Customer Registration Identification Number, Customer Registration Identifier, Customer Identifier, Customer Reference ID, Customer Registration Identifications
a USPS-generated numeric code of up to 15 digits that uniquely identifies a business at a specific location
Full-Service Intelligent MailFS, Full-Service, Full-Service Intelligent Mail option
One of two Intelligent Mail offerings that requires a maximum 31-digit Intelligent Mail barcode comprising five fields: the Barcode ID, Service Type Identifier, Mailer ID, Serial Number, and Routing Code. The Full-Service Intelligent Mail option requires unique mailpiece barcodes, the use of Intelligent Mail barcodes on tray labels or container placards, electronic documentation, and the use of Facility Access and Shipment Tracking to schedule appointments for the entry of mailings.
Error thresholds
a method to measure mailer quality across all pieces mailed in a calendar month
Mail Entry Postage Assessment ReportMail Entry Additional Postage Assessment Report, Mail Entry Assessment Report
eDoc submitters view and pay postage assessments via the Mail Entry Assessment reports.
Move Update error
logged when the address on the mailpiece has not been updated due to a COA record where the more current of the COA Move Effective and COA Create date is between 95 days and 18 months prior to the postage statement finalization date.
Business Service AdministratorBSA, Business Services Administrator, Business Server Administrator, Business Systems Administrator
a representative within your company, for each service

Documents

Contacts

USPS answers questions about the Mailer Scorecard at 1-800-522-9085 and intelligentmailsupport@usps.gov.

Sources