Postage Meter Machines - Top Benefits And Drawbacks Of Leasing For Small Business
The internet is a gift to entrepreneurs, empowering more and more of them to set up internet businesses
. An e-commerce website makes it simpler for businesses to sell products while a business website allows businesses to promote their services. Be it an ecommerce store that sells products or an internet company that offers services to clients, mails and shipments are part of everyday operations. For an e-commerce store, popularity rides on the quickness and superiority of delivery. With postage meters, also called postage machines, business owners will save dollars and time in this critical job.Postage meters allow business owners to directly print appropriate postage onto package labels and letters without the need to go to post offices to get shipments weighed, stamped and franked. They can calculate the accurate postage based on weight, destination, and type of post. What's more, you can also keep tabs on the total amount used up on postage. Efficiency also improves as business owners can give more time to money-making tasks that will grow the business.
Advantages of postage meter for a small business
They are a huge help to small businesses that are already short of time and money, and may not have extra personnel to make frequent trips to the post office. A number of benefits of using postage meters are:
* Hassle-free stamping: With postage machines, businesses can print and pay postage right at the office. You avoid waiting in long queues at the post office to get shipments weighed and printed. You only need to make the trip to drop off the letters or packages or you can arrange to have them collected from your workplace.
* Easy management of all types of mails: Postage meters can process all kinds of mails - Parcel Post, Priority, Domestic First-Class, Express, International parcels, International First-Class etc. As it is very easy to print directly on envelopes, large volume of mails can be weighed and stamped rapidly and correctly.
* Cost savings: Postage meters always stamp packages with exact postage unlike the occasional situation at post offices where precise postage is not available all the time or when you weigh the package on a scale and estimate the postage from a look up table. Parcels are weighed on a scale on the meter and postage is computed on that basis along with the type of mail and where it's being sent.
Disadvantages of a postage meter for a small business
Though postage meters offer numerous pros, you also have a few challenges to deal with, including:
* Lease contract charge: Use of postal meters, rates, and distribution is administered by the country's postal service. They cannot be purchased and have to be taken on lease for specific period. Leasing charges can range from $20 to $500 per month based on the model selected.
* Change in postage charges: Postage rates can be altered by the postal service and this needs to be reflected in the postage meter also. While it is possible to update postage rates electronically in the new digital meters, older models require updated manually by the leaser.
* Government restrictions on repair: The government postal authority does not allow troubleshooting and repair of postage meters by anyone other than the certified leaser. This leads to unwarranted time lags and the business has to fall back on the traditional system of using regular postage stamps and making a trip to the post office till the machine is back in working order.
The convenience, drop in operational costs, and time savings from the use of postage meters cannot be overshadowed by the challenges. Postage machines give a professional appearance to official mails and consignments. Business owners too can invest more time and money on business growth and to pursue new opportunities.
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