A quick way to record which mail packs have been dispatched for postal?

April 2, 2015 6:42 AM

Using the traditional postal service, I would like to sent out a 1000 mail packs. I would really like to be able to easily record which mail packs have been sent out on a particular week. Ideally, this system would also prevent duplicates being sent out.

In short, I have around 1000 address labels saved in Brother label (.lbx) format . Some of them are not as organized as they should be.

I am now about to do my once yearly mail shot of 1000 mail packs using the postal service.

My plan is to do around 100 a week for the next 10 weeks. But I would really like to be able to
record which mailings have gone out in a particular week. Keeping a record of mailings sent out would also reduce the risk of duplicates being sent.

Would a simple barcode-type solution work best here? (Hand-held barcode scanners are available on Ebay for $20)

posted by jacobean to Technology (6 answers total)

You could print out the addresses on a few sheets of paper stapled into a booklet, with a series of numbers under each address representing the ten weeks, and circle the week in which you send out each corresponding package. Even if you need a computerized record of it, for only 1000 digits' worth of information per year it might be easier to key it in periodically rather than rigging up and maintaining a combination of software and hardware. Maybe even with some clever printing and folding the booklet could contain both this checklist and the peel-off labels themselves right next to each address entry.

Another simple option is to have a text file of the addresses open on a computer, Ctrl-F to find the address, and then in many text editors there's usually a hotkey that inserts the current date and time—IIRC it's F5 in Notepad on Windows, for example.
posted by XMLicious at 7:13 AM on April 2, 2015

I think the best thing is to convert the label file into a spreadsheet. Once you have a spreadsheet, just print one day's labels at once and mark them with a ship date as appropriate at the same time. If you want to be extra careful, count the number of packages going out to make sure it matches the number of labels you printed. Keep it simple.
posted by ssg at 7:21 AM on April 2, 2015

There are a variety of ways to do this with different levels of technology.

The lowest-tech way, and the way I would probably do it, is to just print off all the address labels at the beginning of the project, and put them in a box or something. Then, peel the labels off as you put together the mailings and send them out. This requires no extra effort on your part at all, and it will eliminate the risk of duplicates. When you use up the labels, you are done.

A little protip: if you are printing on Avery-type labels (sheet labels, as opposed to using a thermal printer), if you customize the label template a bit, you can set it up so that you print the addressee's name an additional time on the whitespace above or below the actual label. This means that even after you've peeled the label off, the sheet will contain a record of which ones you've sent out.

Basically anything else is going to require an extra "touch" of the mailpieces before you send them. E.g. you could give each person/address an ID number, and put that ID number into a barcode which you print on the labels, and then you could scan the barcodes as the very final step in each batch before you drop them off at the post office. That would provide a positive check that you've sent a particular mailing to a particular person. But it's an extra operation.

Up until a couple of years ago, the USPS gave out Delivery Confirmation labels as little self-adhesive paper slips (they were neon green) which allowed you to do some fairly clever stuff. E.g. you could paste them on, then scan them with a regular old barcode-reader gun, and you'd have a list—before actually sending anything—of all the delivery confirmation numbers. However, those paper labels are no longer supported; Delivery Confirmation codes have to be generated either by a computer program that you run, or by a computer at the post office. If you want to use a postage-printing system, e.g. Ordoro, or the official USPS Click-n-Ship Business, I think you can start from a spreadsheet of addresses and generate address labels that will include a delivery confirmation code, and then they will send you delivery confirmation updates via email. That would get you not only positive confirmation that each package has been mailed, but also that it was received. (Which might or might not be worth the extra cost, depending on what you are doing.)
posted by Kadin2048 at 8:44 AM on April 2, 2015

Its an ideal project for a bar code scanner. You can print a USPS barcode as part of the address and scan the sacn the outgoing packages.

Someplace there should be a program....
posted by SemiSalt at 9:08 AM on April 2, 2015

Thank you for all the great replies so far.

>>>Someplace there should be a program....

The manual methods so far sound good but yes there must be a program out there which can interface with one of those $20 barcode scanners to create a simple dispatch recording system.

Please keep those suggestions coming...
posted by jacobean at 12:26 PM on April 2, 2015

You'd be amazed how good a barcode reader your smartphone is. The ZXing Barcode Scanner app supports all major barcode/2d code formats. It also stores a timed log of all the scans you make, so if you did it just before your post office run, you could track which items were mailed at what time. You can export this log to CSV to read into a spreadsheet.
posted by scruss at 3:23 PM on April 2, 2015