Does anyone here in prepress do in-house mail merges and prep for mailing? I have a question about if you sort for trays, output, etc. in regards to your in-house procedures, to see if we can streamline ours to make it easier/better.
I do quite a bit of merge but I don't have to sort, we send out for that.
can you sort with the excel file? or do you use bulk mailer?
If nobody here does that, you might try the Printplanet forums. There's a guy on there called MailGuru who knows all that stuff. To hear him tell it, it's more trouble than it's worth, because the post office can be super picky.
We do all that stuff in-house, but to be honest I don't know much about what goes on with it. Another department handles the data and gives me the lists, then I create the variable data files and then it goes into production and I don't usually see it after that.
We seem to be having a debate over whether prepress needs to separate final production pieces into trays, or if that's the mail-guy's job...
I've always just sent the list to the mailhouse and they take care of it. Most of the time I don't even see the mail lists.
Quote from: DigiCorn on February 14, 2018, 10:14:57 AMWe seem to be having a debate over whether prepress needs to separate final production pieces into trays, or if that's the mail-guy's job...
If you're using something like BCC in prepress to prep the data - you should also be producing the paperwork that would travel back to the inkjet with the printed pieces. (If you're doing it digitally, it would travel to the digital press.) There should be skid and tray tags that are adhered to the skids and trays. That should all be done by your inkjet operator catching the mail and stacking it in trays...
If you are going to be doing the processing in BCC, I would
HIGHLY SUGGEST you have a person doing it that is
extremely versed in all of mail rules/regs (https://pe.usps.com/DMM300/Index (https://pe.usps.com/DMM300/Index)). Your clients will not be happy if they find out that they could have had a lower postage rate had your operator clicked one little box in BCC when sorting that gave them a high density discount or had you drop shipped into a local SCF.
Good luck.
They got me doing all the Mail work, here...address correction, sorting, merging, dealing with planning for cheapest cost.
I find it required a high level of discipline to get going with this... a mistake can be extremely costly. Think reprint and remail if something goes wrong in the data end. We have an optional envelope printer on our Konica that will print the whole address, indicia, 4 color whatever and it works really good out of InDesign. Having knowledge of the graphic apps really gives you an edge.
Nowadays, after about 5 years of doing it I am a lot more confident and less fearful of it all.
But we are in Canada here, I hear that the US system is a lot different.
I think we do it kind of weird here. We get a list from the customer and it goes to the one guy who knows how to run the software (it used to be Satori, but now it's something new... don't know the name right of the top of my head) and he files it on dropbox, and puts the paperwork in the job ticket. Me and the other prepress pick up the sorted txt file and create the mail merge. Upon approval, we also run the job on one of the digital presses, and put it in bindery. Bindery then cuts/folds (if needed) and runs the inserter (if needed), puts it in the trays and preps for the post office. In prepress, we rarely ever look at the paperwork.
When I started here the pressman ran the inserter, and we had a person or persons who packed it all up, separating the trays as they went. Now we have no dedicated mail person, and we're going through growing pains trying to expand and run this department.
Quote from: DigiCorn on February 14, 2018, 11:38:24 AMI think we do it kind of weird here. We get a list from the customer and it goes to the one guy who knows how to run the software (it used to be Satori, but now it's something new... don't know the name right of the top of my head) and he files it on dropbox, and puts the paperwork in the job ticket. Me and the other prepress pick up the sorted txt file and create the mail merge. Upon approval, we also run the job on one of the digital presses, and put it in bindery. Bindery then cuts/folds (if needed) and runs the inserter (if needed), puts it in the trays and preps for the post office. In prepress, we rarely ever look at the paperwork.
When I started here the pressman ran the inserter, and we had a person or persons who packed it all up, separating the trays as they went. Now we have no dedicated mail person, and we're going through growing pains trying to expand and run this department.
Your process sounds about right to me - I don't see any reason prepress would need to review the postal paperwork unless you know what you're looking at/for to make sure the data processor sorted the list correctly for best postage rate.
What fail-safes are in place to ensure the sort order isn't mixed up while being trimmed, folded and inserted? How often do you have to reprint/replace pieces into the sort? 1 or two misses or out of order won't be a big deal for passing Merlin at the post office, but if you have a high enough percentage out of sort - it will fail Merlin and charge you non-auto postage rates.
We don't have any type of VDP software currently, so we do all merges through InDesign exclusively. We also do not have any kid of imposition software, so when we impose jobs, we impose them manually in InDesign. I played with the multiple record output, but I couldn't find a cut and stack option and it doesn't seem to work if the job is double sided, so the solution for use is to go into Excel and split the list into duplicate columns with new header names so that we can place multiple records without duplication. Any other solutions out there?
Sounds a lot like our place.
I would suggest something like Quite imposing for the cut and stack, and also the variable step and repeat in indesign for labels..... 14up, 4up whatever. Works very good and you can add graphics, etc if needed.
Quote from: pspdfppdfxhd on February 15, 2018, 10:11:42 AMSounds a lot like our place.
I would suggest something like Quite imposing for the cut and stack, and also the variable step and repeat in indesign for labels..... 14up, 4up whatever. Works very good and you can add graphics, etc if needed.
Oh, you had already mentioned the multiple layout, nevermind.
yeah the backs cause a problem to cut and stack in indesign.
if it was one sided you could use the multipage import and use the X, Y Coordinates
to place for example pg 1-50 in top left 51-100 top right
101-150 Bottom left and 151-200 bottom right
Quote from: ninjaPB_43 on February 14, 2018, 02:11:10 PMQuote from: DigiCorn on February 14, 2018, 11:38:24 AMI think we do it kind of weird here. We get a list from the customer and it goes to the one guy who knows how to run the software (it used to be Satori, but now it's something new... don't know the name right of the top of my head) and he files it on dropbox, and puts the paperwork in the job ticket. Me and the other prepress pick up the sorted txt file and create the mail merge. Upon approval, we also run the job on one of the digital presses, and put it in bindery. Bindery then cuts/folds (if needed) and runs the inserter (if needed), puts it in the trays and preps for the post office. In prepress, we rarely ever look at the paperwork.
When I started here the pressman ran the inserter, and we had a person or persons who packed it all up, separating the trays as they went. Now we have no dedicated mail person, and we're going through growing pains trying to expand and run this department.
Your process sounds about right to me - I don't see any reason prepress would need to review the postal paperwork unless you know what you're looking at/for to make sure the data processor sorted the list correctly for best postage rate.
What fail-safes are in place to ensure the sort order isn't mixed up while being trimmed, folded and inserted? How often do you have to reprint/replace pieces into the sort? 1 or two misses or out of order won't be a big deal for passing Merlin at the post office, but if you have a high enough percentage out of sort - it will fail Merlin and charge you non-auto postage rates.
Put control codes on everything..... 0001, 0002 etc. If something gets screwed up with the inserter then the operator makes sure the envelope position in the tray is flagged and then later it will be reprinted. We're very accurate on the inserter here, maybe a few problems per 10,000 or so.
yeah - we number pages without barcodes, and those that are coded have two lines... an endorsement line and a "t/b/s" (tray/bundle/sort), so if one gets fubar'd we know which one to rerun.