Postage From the Cloud: Solution Delivers Postage to a Home Office Printer Near You

By Jeff Zbar
www.chiefhomeofficer.com

Many home-based and small business owners say the back-office triumvirate of marketing, accounting and collections are the most challenging hats in all of business. Apparently, they've never tried to create exact postage to mail a tax return to Atlanta.

Try pulling $1.56 in exact postage from a sheet of 44-cent first-class stamps. Doesn't work.

What if you could print exact postage, in any denomination – just when you need it – straight out of the cloud?

That's new spin on an old concept offered by Dymo Endicia Printable Postage service. Log on, create an account, and use a credit card to buy postage online. No lines. No waiting.

Small business and home office postage has come a long way. Some small business owners recall having to buy little in-line adapters for printer cables, which actually stored postage credits. Others just bit the bullet and went the Pitney-Bowes way – investing hundreds in a metered scale and printer.

With Dymo (that of label-maker fame) Endicia (the mailing people), the concept is simple: Log into your account, and use a credit card to buy and store some postal value. Next time you need stamps, type in the amount of postage. A printer app launches to reveal a sheet of labels.

That begs the first caveat to the process: You'll need to buy preprinted labels (a little pricey at eight sheets for $20.95 – plus shipping, effectively adding 10 cents to the cost of each stamp printed).

Another catch: If you want to print ONE stamp of a specific value (I needed $1.56 to send my tax return to the IRS in Atlanta), it can get a little iffy as there's no obvious default to do that. The people at Dymo Endicia prefer you print by the sheet – but of $1.56 stamps? I imagine filing my return via U.S. Mail in 2033 – ostensibly when my sheet would bear its last stamp – will cost significantly more than $1.56. Actually, I doubt the U.S. Postal Service even will be around – and the IRS probably will have spent the previous two decades frowning on anything other than eFile.

Be that as it may, to print a single stamp with the Printable Postage software, when viewing the sheet with stamps and values, click on a stamp and manually change the postage for each one (even selecting "blank" for no postage). Either right click on individual stamps or click and highlight a single stamp to change the postage type / value on the drop-down menus. Or, drag the mouse across a grouping of stamps or click with CTRL to select numerous stamps at the same time.

The people at Dymo Endicia recommend running a test print first to ensure you don't goof on the print set-up. Good advice.

Another option: Buy a Dymo LabelWriter printer (starting under $200) and Dymo postage labels (200-label rolls starting under $15). Printing one-off postage is simple.

A final caveat: For class-postage, the system only allows users to print postage for letters up to 13 oz. However, with Printable Postage, you can mail items weighing more than 13 oz. from a home or business mailbox by using USPS flat rate boxes and envelopes. The maximum postage for a single stamp you can purchase with DYMO Printable Postage on the free monthly plan is $18.30 (the cost of a large flat rate Express mail envelope). If you want to mail larger parcels without using USPS flat rate boxes, DYMO Endicia's shipping service plans start at $9.95 a month. This service includes USPS carrier pick-up (as long as there was at least one piece of Priority or Express mail in the pick-up request).

The application works with Mac or PC running Mac OX X 10.3.9 or greater – Windows 2000, XP, Vista. You'll need an Internet connection, Endicia Printable Postage Stamp Sheets Account, Endicia Printable Postage Sheets and a inkjet or laser compatible printer.

I also recommend buying or having a postal scale on hand to weigh odd-sized items. Endicia's digital models start around $90 (weighs up to 25 pounds); my old-school scale weighs up to a pound and cost less than $15. And because the app is based in the cloud, postal rate changes automatically are updated in the system.

Actually, it's pretty easy – and cost effective. No lines at the Post Office. No wondering whether you have enough – or too much – postage for a specific parcel.

Along with your postal scale, your Dymo Endicia account (and labels, of course) could be the solution to that pesky back-office nag. Now, as for marketing, accounting and collections, that's another story…

Since the '80s, Jeff Zbar has been a writer, speaker and spokesman on all facets of working from home and entrepreneurship. His columns, blogs and interviews have appeared in The New York Times, CNN, Entrepreneur, Home Office Computing, South Florida Sun-Sentinel and the South Florida Business Journal. He also serves as a small business expert on national television and radio. Follow him on Twitter @chiefhomeoffice or at www.chiefhomeofficer.com.