Print and Mail Outsourcing: Frequently Asked Questions
TPSi is an outsourced transactional print, mail, and electronic document delivery provider founded in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with a second production facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico. TPSi produces statements, bills, notices, and mail pieces for utilities, municipalities, credit unions, financial institutions, and healthcare organizations across the United States. The questions below cover how outsourced print and mail works, how customer data is secured, how postage discounts are obtained, and how organizations move an existing statement or billing application to a new provider.
Print and Mail Outsourcing Basics
What is outsourced print and mail?
Outsourced print and mail is the use of a third-party provider to perform some or all of document composition, printing, inserting, postal preparation, barcoding, and entry into the USPS mailstream. Depending on the provider and engagement, services may also include electronic delivery and document archiving.
Organizations commonly outsource these functions when in-house printer or inserter equipment reaches the end of its useful life, when volume exceeds internal capacity, when stronger document-integrity controls are needed, or when experienced staff who understand a legacy print process retire.
What is the difference between a commercial printer and a transactional print provider?
Commercial printing often focuses on materials produced from common artwork, while transactional printing focuses on recipient-specific documents generated from customer, account, billing, or other record data. Transactional work commonly requires tighter reconciliation and piece-level controls. The categories can overlap: commercial printers may use variable data, and transactional providers may also produce static work.
| Commercial Printer | Transactional Print Provider | |
|---|---|---|
| Content Source | Fixed Artwork | Customer data file |
| Typical run | One design, many copies | Many unique documents, one run |
| Piece-level tracking | Not standard | Required, every piece reconciled |
| Data Handling | Artwork files | Regulated customer records |
| Recurring schedule | Project Based | Daily, cycle-based, or monthly |
| Regulatory exposure | Genrally Lower | GLBA, PCI DSS, state utility rules |
TPSi operates as a transactional provider and also runs conventional short-run and direct-mail work on the same equipment, allowing one vendor to support both a recurring billing cycle and a marketing campaign.
What is a transactional document?
A transactional document is a customer-specific communication typically generated from account, billing, or other record data rather than consisting solely of fixed artwork. Statements, invoices, bills, explanations of benefits, tax forms, checks, privacy notices, and regulatory disclosures are common examples.
Unlike general marketing materials, transactional documents may contain personal, financial, or regulated information and often must be produced and delivered accurately. A missing page, an incorrect insert, or a document delivered to the wrong recipient can create privacy, compliance, financial, or customer-service consequences. This is why document integrity and piece-level tracking are especially important for transactional communications.
Production and Mail Integrity
What is selective inserting and why does it matter?
Selective inserting is the process of placing different inserts into different envelopes within the same production run, based on rules applied to each recipient's data record. It allows a single billing cycle to deliver a rate-change notice only to affected service classes, a Spanish-language insert only to flagged accounts, or a cross-sell offer only to qualifying members.
TPSi places up to six variable inserts in each mailpiece and supports selective remittance-envelope insertion. A 2D Data Matrix barcode on the document directs the inserter and helps verify page count and insert selection for the recipient. A mailpiece that fails verification is diverted from the production workflow for human inspection and correction. If reprinting is required, TPSi attempts to complete it the same day or the next business day. The intervention is recorded in the mail-audit images.
How does mail piece integrity tracking work?
TPSi assigns a 2D Data Matrix barcode to each document during composition. The inserter scans the barcode, confirms that the correct number of pages and selected inserts are present for the recipient, and logs the result. Cameras at both ends of the machine provide additional production records. Each sheet is tracked by account number and each mailpiece by sequence number.
The result is a piece-level production and insertion record showing that each recipient in the input file was processed and whether each mailpiece passed verification. Finalized USPS acceptance records or mailing documentation can separately support that the completed mailing was presented to and accepted by USPS. Together, these records can support reconciliation and audit or compliance reviews.
What document composition software does TPSi use?
TPSi composes documents using OpenText Exstream, an enterprise customer communications management platform. TPSi licensed the platform in October 2001, when it was still Dialogue by Exstream Software of Lexington, Kentucky, and has run it in continuous production ever since, through its acquisition by Hewlett-Packard in 2008 and by OpenText in 2016.
Exstream applies conditional content, targeted messaging, white space management, consumption graphics, charts, and delivery-channel routing from a single design, rather than requiring a separate template for each output type. Nearly twenty-five years of continuous production on one platform means TPSi is not learning a composition engine on a customer's billing cycle.
Data Security
How do you send customer data to a print and mail vendor securely?
Customer data is transmitted to TPSi over secure FTP (SFTP) using credentials and a directory structure issued to each customer during implementation. Sensitive customer or production data is never accepted over ordinary unencrypted email.
Each recurring application is configured with a dedicated account, a defined file naming convention, automated arrival notification, and a receipt confirmation, so the sending organization has a record that the cycle was received and when.
Mailing and Postage
What is CASS certification and does my mailing need it?
CASS, or Coding Accuracy Support System, is a USPS certification program for address-matching software. Current CASS-certified address-matching methods are required when a mailing claims automation prices. The software standardizes and codes addresses that can be successfully matched, including ZIP+4 and delivery-point information when available.
TPSi uses current CASS-certified address-matching software on most mailings it produces. Exceptions may be made at the customer's request when automation-price eligibility is not required or another applicable mailing method is used.
What is NCOALink and how often should addresses be updated?
NCOALink® is a USPS change-of-address matching product that compares a mailing list with change-of-address records. Full Service Providers receive 48 months of change-of-address data, while Limited Service Providers and End User Mailers receive 18 months. When a record is successfully matched, NCOALink can return updated address information.
USPS Move Update standards require addresses used for commercial First-Class Mail presorted or automation prices and USPS Marketing Mail prices to be updated using a USPS-approved method within 95 days before the mailing date. Running NCOALink on each production cycle can reduce undeliverable-as-addressed mail, help maintain Move Update compliance, and reduce the risk that statements or notices containing account information are sent to an outdated address.
What postage discounts can an outsourced mail provider obtain?
Postage savings depend on mail class, shape, weight, destination mix, preparation, entry point, and available USPS promotions. A mail provider may help mailings qualify for applicable automation and presort prices by using current address-matching methods, Intelligent Mail barcodes, approved presort software, and electronic documentation. Eligible Full-Service mailings and USPS promotions may provide additional savings.
TPSi presorts and mails more than 30 million pieces per year and also provides merge-and-purge processing, electronic address-service updates, and support for applicable USPS promotions.
Business Continuity
What happens if a print and mail vendor's facility goes down mid-cycle?
TPSi operates two production facilities approximately 600 miles apart, in Tulsa, Oklahoma and Albuquerque, New Mexico. Each facility has capacity in excess of one million images per day and can mail up to 200,000 pieces per day. Established applications can be transferred between the two sites, providing geographic redundancy and backup production capacity if an equipment failure, facility interruption, regional event, or other emergency affects normal operations.
For recurring and time-sensitive applications, production requirements and recovery procedures are documented during implementation so work can be transferred while maintaining accuracy, security, and delivery deadlines.
Delivery and Archiving
Can documents be delivered electronically instead of by mail?
TPSi can divide a production file according to each recipient's delivery preference, printing and mailing documents for recipients who receive paper and generating electronic delivery for recipients enrolled in e-delivery. Both channels are produced from the same composed document set to help keep content consistent across delivery methods. Options include eNotification, eStatement and eBill presentment, links to payment options, and single sign-on integration (SSO) with the customer's existing website.
Using one composition process reduces the risk that the document a customer views online will not match the content of the paper document they receive.
How long are documents kept in the online archive?
TPSi hosts more than 20 million document images at any given time in an encrypted, controlled-access archive, and typically retains images for 13 to 18 months, with longer retention available. Access can be restricted to internal customer service representatives and administrators, or opened to end customers for eStatement and eBill presentment.
TPSi also supports archive preloading, so historical documents from a previous provider are searchable from day one of a contract transition.
Files, Proofs, and Service Area
What file formats does TPSi accept?
TPSi accepts print-ready PDF and PDF/X for artwork, and CSV, Excel, XML, JSON, and delimited or fixed-width text for variable data. Adobe InDesign packages, Illustrator AI and EPS, Photoshop PSD, TIFF, and high-resolution JPEG and PNG are also accepted, with print-ready PDF preferred.
Data files should include a record layout or field description on first submission. TPSi reviews every new file format before production and confirms field mapping with the customer before the first live cycle.
Do I get a proof before production?
TPSi provides PDF proofs for review, and hard-copy proofs where the substrate or finishing warrants it. Variable-data applications additionally include test files, selected sample records covering edge cases, and physical production samples to verify formatting, personalization logic, business rules, and document integrity. Production does not begin until the required approval is received.
TPSi customers can also run and review their own test files through WebViewTool, a customer-facing test environment that shows how data changes will affect print output without waiting on TPSi. Customers can use it to review exception bills, helping reduce review time and allowing corrected bills to return to the production workflow sooner.
Does TPSi work with organizations outside Oklahoma and New Mexico?
TPSi serves organizations throughout the United States and does not require customers to be located near either production facility. Data is transmitted electronically, mail is entered into the USPS mailstream from Tulsa or Albuquerque, and printed materials that are not mailed are shipped to the destination required.