High Sort Options:

For sorting into areas of around 1,500 "Direct selections" or 86 "Residue selections".

Mail items are allocated into one or more bags/trays per selection. Direct selections give a better discount than Residue selections, but are subject to minimum selection numbers (50 for Letters and 10 for Large letters).

Example: If the total number of letter items allocated to a given direct selection is only 45 (less than 50), they all will drop to the corresponding residue selection.

Low Sort OCR Options:

Sorts mail items into areas of up to 86 Residues selections. Gives you a better discount than High Sort but only mailings that meet the Royal Mail machine-readable specification are eligible.

If you require enhanced facilities such as reporting, track & trace, eManifest and other facilities you should use our Mailmark services instead.

Minimum volumes for both High Sort and Low Sort:

• Letters - minimum 4,000 (only 1,000, if all items are within the same direct selection area).
• Large Letters - minimum 1,000

Royal Mail User Guide:

For more detailed information please click here to access the user guides from the Royal Mail Technical website.

Pre-processing is FREE FOR ALL SERVICES:

When you upload a file for processing, you are not under any obligation to make a payment.
The system will run through a pre-processing procedure allowing you free access to the following files:

• Computer Planning Report.
• Sample of the fully sorted address file (containing the first 200 records).
• File containing a list of records not eligible for mailsort (if any).
• File containing a list of records, eligible, but matched on post town rather than postcode (if any).

Downloading full data set:

Upon payment of our processing fee, all the files you need for producing your mail items, bag labels and reports required by the Royal Mail will be made available for download. In addition to the above, these include:

• Line Listing Report - supplied as csv, xml and printable html file.
• Fully sorted address file (containing all eligible records).
• File containing Bag/Tray label data. (use your own label printer or send to Royal Mail for printing)
• VAT invoice/receipt (printable pdf file).

Payments are taken via Paypal which also supports normal Credit/Debit Card payments.

Annual Account holders:

For annual account holders, all files are available for download immediately after pre-processing.

How our processing fee is calculated:

The calculated fee will be displayed when pre-processing is finished. The fee is applied per file and is calculated either as a price per thousand records passed or a minimum amount, whichever is the highest.
Example: Processing a file containing 30,000 records for High Sort (£0.50 per 1000 - min £20.00), the calculation is as follows: 30000*0.5/1000 = 15. With this being smaller than the minimum fee (£20.00), the charge applied would be £20.00 plus VAT.

What is Mailsort Online about?

If you have more than 1000 letters to send in one go, the Royal Mail offers substantial discounts on the posting costs if you sort them yourself and put them in mail bags or trays before handing them over to the Royal Mail.

This is where we can help. Our website can do the sorting bit for you within a few minutes. As a "Pay As You Go" service it is a very cost-effective and hassle-free way to do mailsort.

For frequent users, we are happy to discuss setting up an annual account for you, or we can offer you a desktop version of the software if you prefer to do it that way.

How much does it cost?

Pre-processing is FREE FOR ALL SERVICES, which includes download of computer planning report and sample data, but download of full processed data sets is subject to a processing fee. Click here for more info.

Who can use the system?

In principle, anyone with a minimum of 1000 large letters or 4000 normal letters to send. In practice, it is mostly businesses, charities, organisations and authorities alike who would do this.

How long does it take?:

The turn-around time depends on the size of mailing and how busy the system is, but we are talking about seconds rather than minutes. Under normal circumstances an address file of say 50,000 records only takes about 10 to 15 seconds to process. Barcode services require more processor power and take a bit longer.

Files are placed in a queueing system and are processed on a "first come first serve" basis. We can usually process several files simultaneously and thereby keep waiting times to a minimum. If, however, you are experiencing a long delay (more than 10 minutes) please contact us to establish what the problem is.