Postal Presort

Presorting means sorting the documents in a print stream to minimize postal costs. Presorting software, such as Mailstream Plus, identifies the optimal sort order and produces the required postal reports. However, presorting software cannot operate on complex print streams. Enrichment interfaces with presorting software to perform postal presort processing on print streams.

Note: Presort software such as Mailstream Plus is Presort Accuracy Validation and Evaluation (PAVE™) certified by the USPS®.
Note: When Enrichment performs presort processing, it operates in "all-at-a-time" mode. For more information, see Processing Flow.

During presorting, Enrichment identifies key information on all documents and builds an index. The external presort program can sort the index file or remove records from it. Enrichment then reorders the print stream to match the sorted index file. If any records have been removed, Enrichment can write the documents associated with these records to a separate file (called a reject file).

Presorting effectively allows Enrichment users to change the order of documents in the print stream and optionally exclude certain documents. The external programs that Enrichment calls can be postal sorting programs or any other type of program that can manipulate an index.

As the following figure shows, Enrichment does the following during the presort process:

  • Analyzes each document (1) in an output stream to gather the necessary sort information. Runs DOCUMENT: rules.
  • Writes the sort information, one line per document, to the presort index file (2).
  • After all documents have been analyzed, Enrichment calls the external program (3) to sort and purge records from the temporary index (4).
  • Reads the sorted index (5) and reorders the documents to match the index order. Runs PRESORTED: rules and writes out the documents (6).
  • Compares the original index to the sorted index to identify missing records.
  • Optionally, writes all documents associated with missing records to a reject file (7).
Note: Enrichment performs these steps in a single run, thus simplifying operation and improving performance.

Use the Presort tag group within the Output group to specify outputs on which Enrichment is to perform a postal presort (or system sort). The Presort group must begin with the <PRESORT> tag and end with the </PRESORT> tag. Neither tag has parameters.