Bulk Mailings

Church Windows meets US Post Office requirements for bulk mailing discounted rate. Talk to a representative at your local post office for more information on their requirements for bulk mailing.

Church Windows Compliance with USPS Requirements

In order to send out bulk mailings, you'll need a permit from the USPS. If you use Standard Bulk Mail, you may qualify for a non-profit rate from the USPS. For further information about bulk mail, you can request "Publication 95" (also known as the "Quick Service Guide"), from your local postmaster, at www.usps.com.

Church Windows also works in conjunction with Postage $aver, a PAVE-Gold certified program that processes your bulk mailings in the most cost-effective manner. PAVE-Gold is the highest level of certification that a program can attain from the USPS. We have partnered with Postage $aver to maximize your organization's mailing capabilities.

Postage $aver

For a free trial of Postage $aver, visit their website, savepostage.com. Once the program is installed, go to Administration, then System Information, then click Browse. After the program finds the location click OK. A message will appear, notifying you that your 30-day trial has begun. Once the trial period is over, you will need to purchase Postage $aver to continue using it.

Using Postage $aver with Church Windows

After Postage $aver is installed, follow the instruction and make sure the correct Church Windows serial number is entered. Click Browse and it will search the mapped drives automatically to find the Postage $aver program.

In order to create Labels with barcodes, you will need to link Postage $aver with Church Windows:

• To finish linking program, check Use Postage $aver

• If Postage $aver is installed on your computer, the program will automatically fill in the file location.

• If this does not happen, you can click the box and browse to where Postage $aver was installed.

• Once the file location is chosen, click OK.

If Postage $aver cannot be found on a mapped drive, an explorer win point the system to the correct drive. The drive does not have to be mapped for Postage $aver to work This step will need to be completed on each computer that will have access to the Postage $aver program.

Barcodes are not needed unless you are sending thousands of pieces of mail, and they must be identical (such as a newsletter). This would not include Donation statements, as there are variations like names and amount of information for each. Bulk Mail rate requires 200 pieces or more and does not require barcodes. USPS states: Barcoding your mail may entitle you to a lower postage rate, but only if all the other requirements for automation postage prices are met. A barcode alone will not qualify your mail for automation prices. In general, the US Postal Service recommends that, unless you are preparing a mailing for automation prices, you should not include barcodes. As long as the mailing address is correct, it will still be processed efficiently without a barcode, and you won’t need to worry about having the barcode on your mail. A bad (incorrect) barcode is much worse than none at all: it can cause your mail to be sent to the wrong destination.

Once you have entered criteria and settings for labels, click Print for Postage $aver options.

Enter your categories. For questions or clarifications on this dialog, reach out to Postage $aver. For information on mailing requirements, consult USPS.

Once Postage $aver has all of the necessary settings entered, it will re-sort them to the correct USPS requirements.

Postage $aver Reports

You can print three reports at a time. If you skip these reports now, you can access them from the Postage $aver software directly until your next mailing.

• Mailing Preparation Instructions

  Provides information on how to organize your mail, how much money you’ll need, and give you information for the USPS statement.

• USPS Qualification Report

  Take this to the post office when you drop off your mail.

• Tray/Sack Tags

  This will print cards to label your trays and sacks. For this report you can use Avery 5371 (postcards/business cards for laser printers) or Avery 8371 (postcards/business cards for ink jet).

If, during the envelope labeling process, they get out of order, you can use the Mail Preparation Instructions to put them back in order.

CASS Certification and NCOA Processing

If you will be printing labels with barcodes, you will need to certify your address with USPS. The postal service will certify your addresses once for free. Church Windows recommends Lorton Data to handle your Coding Accuracy Support System (CASS) Certification needs. Lorton has agreed to accept the input and format the output disk to make the USPS functions that exist in Church Windows. You can access the Lorton certification at www.churchwindows.com/partners-lorton-data. For your convenience, we have filled in some of the information required. Your address should be CASS certified at least every six months. If you have any questions about Lorton, visit lortondata.com or call 651.203.8290. Make note of the section marked “retain case”. Without this notation, your data may be returned in all uppercase. It is okay for your data to be in mixed case as Church Windows will convert to uppercase and strip punctuation when you print mailing labels.

Not sure if you need CASS/NCOA?

We recommend reading the general information provided by Postage $aver at www.bulkmail.info, specifically http://bulkmail.info/moveupdate.html. You can also contact your local postmaster for further details.

Once you have determined your addresses must be certified, you can create a CASS/NCOA file and then Import your output from Lorton.