This article contains an example for the previous article: "Intelligent Mail Serial Number Tracking for Full Service - Part 1: Database setup". Shown below is the recommended spreadsheet layout with some sample data typed in. This mailer is using 2 different mailer ids, and mailing 2 different classes of mail. This means that some of the serial number ranges can overlap and still be considered unique as shown in rows 4 and 5. Row 4 can overlap previous ranges because row 4 has a different mailer id. Row 5 can overlap row 4 because even though both have the same mailer id, the jobs are for different mail classes.
Now for a Postalsoft Presort user generating a Full-service mailing, the main issue is to select the correct starting piece serial number to uniquely number the mail pieces of the job. Here are the job file parameters I'm referring to.
First fill in the "IMB Mailer ID" value. For instance, let's say this mailer will be using Mailer ID 987654321. Then determine the mailing class, let's assume this mailer wants to mail a Standard A mailing. All the previous Standard A mailings are identified by a '3' value in the spreadsheet MailClass column. Finally the mailer can determine the "IMB Serial Num Start" value by going into their spreadsheet, sorting the records by MailerID (descending), MailClass (descending), SerNumEnd (descending) , and finally EnteredDate (descending). Here is a typical sortation screen for a spreadsheet.
Finally, the mailer viewed the sorted data, finds the first row of the Mailer ID of the new mailing, finds the first row of the Mail Class, and uses the ending serial number, plus 1, as the IMB Serial Num Start value in the Presort job file version block. Once this mailing has been accomplished, then a new record will need to be added to the spreadsheet data that includes all the pertinent information and starting and ending serial numbers for this mailing job.
Note: As time goes by, any spreadsheet records that are older than the number of days that you want to keep serial number unique, should be deleted or marked as 'archived' in an additional record field. That way the serial numbers that were used a long time ago can be used over again for new mailings.
Thanks for reading. I hope this example helps everyone track their unique serial numbers better!