Mailers that are participating in Seamless Acceptance have their electronic postage statements automatically finalized after a successful job submission. The postage statements are finalized by the PostalOne! system on the Postage Statement Mailing Date that was submitted in the eDoc at which point balance checks are performed. Electronic postage statements auto-finalize after the job is submitted on the designated Mailing Date listed in the eDoc. It is the responsibility of the mailer to ensure that their account contains sufficient postage funds for all Permit numbers they submit for auto-finalization.
When the eDoc is uploaded to PostalOne! before the Postage Statement Mailing Date, the available balance of the permit or Account Numbers is checked beginning two days before the mailing date. The electronic postage statement auto-finalizes on the postage statement mailing date for containers that are set to Ready-to-Pay (UPD) status during the next auto-finalization processing run.
When the eDoc is uploaded to PostalOne! on or after the Postage Statement Mailing Date, the electronic postage statement auto-finalizes. This step is part of the postage statement generation process for containers, which occurs when containers are set to UPD status, and there are sufficient funds in the account(s).
If there are insufficient funds to cover the postage, a negative balance email is automatically sent to the email address(es) that have been set up in the Seamless Site admin page under the email address section in PostalOne!. If an email has not been set up in Seamless site admin all emails will go directly to the PostalOne! Tier II Support distributions.
Registered emails are sent based on the electronic postage statement submission method:
- For statements submitted using Mail.dat or Mail.XML - eDoc submitting CRID.
- For Postal Wizard or Intelligent Mail Small Business Tool (IMsb Tool) — mailer CRID.
For a Postal Service Acceptance Employee to receive the negative balance email, they will need to be set up in the Seamless Site admin page under the email address section in PostalOne!. The mailer and Postal Service employee must then ensure the impacted account(s) is funded. PostalOne! continues to attempt to auto-finalize the mailing until the account(s) is funded or the 14-day auto-finalization period has passed. PostalOne! will continue to send the negative balance email every time it tries to auto-finalize for the 14-days. After the 14-day auto-finalization period, the mailing must be manually finalized by a Postal Service Acceptance Employee after funds have been added.
Balance checks are performed on Seamless electronic postage statements starting 2 days before the Postage Statement Mailing Date and will go on until 14 days after the mailing date if a statement has not auto-finalized by that time. Email notification is sent if the postage statement will cause the Enterprise Payment System (EPS) account or a permit to go negative, beyond allowable threshold for a submitter CRID. If a Seamless postage statement ends up causing the EPS account or permit to go negative, but it is within the configurable threshold for the submitter CRID, then an override is issued on the statement.
The system generates a negative balance error in Mail.dat/Mail.XML when the balance check is performed each day starting a configurable number of days (currently set to two) prior to the Postage Statement Mailing Date if the electronic postage statement would require the account to have a negative balance and is outside of a configurable allowable error threshold for that CRID. If the account is still negative and outside the error threshold on the day of the Postage Statement Mailing Date the postage is not auto finalized. In this instance, the mail will not be accepted without funding and the mailer must contact the local BME for support to get the mail entered if the reason for the negative balance is a technical issue. Only in this instance, the mailer has a configurable number of days (currently set to 14) to add the appropriate funds to the account so that the electronic postage statement can be auto finalized. The 14-day period is not an “allowable” float for funds. After the configurable period, the electronic postage statement requires manual finalization by an Acceptance Employee.
