Parcels: Ways to Pay Postage

After choosing to ship with the U.S. Postal Service® for its quality service and affordability, businesses must select a method of postage payment that best meets their needs.  Postage payment options include: stamp, postage meter, PC Postage® (Internet postage), and permit imprint.
 
Stamps, meter strips, and PC Postage are all ‘live’ postage payment methods that require prepayment.  That is, you pay the postage for your shipment when you buy your stamps, ‘fill’ your meter machine, or print PC Postage.  Postage has already been paid when you print or affix any of these payment options to your package.  As a result, mistakes in package preparation become more costly—when stamps are lost or stolen, changes need to be made to a shipment after meter strips have been applied, or a package with PC Postage must be held for shipment another day, you incur an expense that is hard to recoup.

While stamps, postage meters, or PC Postage may prove sufficient for smaller postal shippers sending a small number of packages daily, they may prove limiting to shippers with substantial postal volume. Permit imprints are advised for mid- to large-volume shippers—those who ship at least 50 pieces or 200 pounds daily—in order to avoid the limitations above.

For details on each method, see related articles: “Parcels: Paying with Stamps”, “Parcels: Paying with Meters”, “Parcels: Paying with PC Postage”, and “Parcels: Paying with Permits."

Window Book’s postal shipping software—Postal Package Partner™—supports shippers using any of these postage payment methods by facilitating package preparation and labeling, postal acceptance, postage management and parcel tracking.