The internet is a boon to budding business owners, enabling more and more of them to launch online businesses. An e-commerce website makes it easy for businesses to sell products while a business website advertises services offered by an enterprise.Be it an ecommerce store that sells products or an online company that offers services to clients, mails and shipments are part of everyday operations. In fact, for an e-commerce store, reputation rides on theswiftness and quality of delivery. If these businesses acquire postage meters, also called postage machines, they can save both time and money in this critical task.

Postage meters allow business owners to directly stampaccurate postage onto package labels and envelopesthus saving a trip to the post office to get consignments weighed, stamped and franked. They are equipped with a scale and can calculate theaccurate postage based on weight, destination, and kind ofpost. What’s more, you can also monitor the amount of money spent on postage.Efficiency also gets a boost as business owners can give more time to gainful tasks that will grow the business.

Advantages of postage meter for a small business

They are a huge help to small businesses as they cannot afford a lot of time into non-core business tasks, not to mention workersto make frequent trips to the post office. A number of pros of using postage meters are:

  • Convenient 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 metered. All you need to do is make one trip to drop the letters or packages or get them collected from your office.
  • Easy management of all types of mails: Postage machines can take care of most type of mails – Parcel Post, Priority, Domestic First-Class, Express, International parcels, International First-Class etc. As it is quite simple to print directly on envelopes, large volume of mails can be weighed and stamped swiftly and accurately.
  • Cost savings: Postage meters always stamp packages with precisepostage 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 weighing scale on the meter and postage iscomputed accordingly.

Disadvantages of a postage meter for a small business

Though postage meters offer quite a few pros, youalso have a few challenges to deal with, such as:

  • Lease contract charge:Usage of postal meters,charges, and distribution is managed by the country’s postal service. They cannot bebought, only taken on lease for specific period. Leasing charges vary from $20 to $500 per month depending on the sophistication of the model.
  • Change in postage rates: Postage rates can be altered by the postal service and this needs to be reflected in the postage meter also. While latest digital meters can be updated electronically,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 theendorsed leaser. This can cause delays andthe business has no other option except going back to thetraditional system of using regular postage stamps and mailing at the post office till the machine is back in working order.

The convenience, reduction in operational expenses, and time savings from the use of postage meters greatly outweigh their disadvantages. Businesses can benefit from the professionalism these machines bring to official mails and shipments. Business owners too can invest more time and money on business growth and to pursue new opportunities. Daljeet Sidhu is the author of this article.

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