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1st QTR
(January
- March)
Calendar
Year 2003
The Document Management Branch (DMB), Logistics Staff, Office of Finance
and Administration will begin the issuance of a quarterly “Mail
Management Bulletin” for NOAA offices using mail meters and involved
with various types of mailing services. Joy Taylor is the Chief
of the DMB and Millard Hanna is the Team Leader. The Following is
the first issuance of the Bulletin. Jim Champion and Rita
Argueta are the leads for the Bulletin and may be reached at 301-713-2220
for questions or comments. Future Bulletins will include information
that our team feels could be useful to all NOAA offices that use meter
equipment or mail services provided by either our Branch or by the US
Postal Service.
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Zeroing out Your Meter
- As many
of you are aware, our goal each year is to zero out your meter at the
end
of the fiscal year which ends at the close of business on September
30th.
This means that your meter should contain very little money as you
transition
into the following fiscal year. The reason that we want your
meter
zeroed out is so we only pay for postage that is used in the current
fiscal
year. The Postal Service charges NOAA for the postage that you
set
in your meter at the time of the setting. Towards the end
of
the fiscal year, especially in the last month, you should set your
meter
only for what you think will actually be needed. If these change,
you can add enough to cover new requirements that take place before the
end of the fiscal year. |
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Official Mail
Accounting System (OMAS)
- Each Government agency's
postage
costs are maintained in the OMAS system which is a computerized
accounting
system run by the U.S. Postal Service. After each quarter
of
the year, the Postal Service provides each agency with its postage
costs
accumulated during that quarter. Postage costs are entered into
the
OMAS by local Post Offices for permit imprint mailings, business
reply, express mail, and international mail. Also, each time your
office
sets funding in your meter through either Pitney Bowes or Ascom Hasler,
the funding is then transmitted to the OMAS NOAA account.
The
quarterly OMAS reports for NOAA are sent to the NOAA Mail Management
staff,
which uses them to calculate quarterly and end-of-year costs for each
line
office. The staff uses the monthly Postage Usage and Reset
Reports
sent from all of the meter users in NOAA to check the OMAS quarterly
reports
to assure that NOAA is being charged correctly for its
meters.
The General Services Administration (GSA), which has overall
responsibility
for Government mail policy, may instruct Government agencies to go off
the OMAS system to a commercial system. The Mail Management staff
will attend a GSA meeting in December to learn more about the new
system.
We will then pass the information to you. |
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Procedures for
Obligating Postage Costs
- The Postal Service requires each Government agency to provide an
estimate of its postage costs for the next fiscal year. This
estimate
is required by September of each year for the next fiscal
year.
The Postal Service then bills each agency on a monthly basis for
one-twelfth
of the estimated cost for the year. This assures the Postal
Service
that money will be appropriated to cover postage costs for the
year.
The NOAA Mail Manager each year in September requests funding from the
NOAA Management and Budget offices for the National Weather Service,
National
Marine Fisheries Service, National Ocean Service, National
Environmental
Satellite, Data, and Information Service, and Office of Oceanic and
Atmospheric
Research. In addition, the Logistics Staff office provides
postage
funding for the Office of Finance and Administration and the other NOAA
staff offices. All of the funding is included in a purchase order
and sent to the NOAA Finance office in Germantown, Maryland. At
the
end of the fiscal year, the actual costs are computed and compared to
the
estimated postage paid to the Postal Service. If NOAA overpaid
the
Postal Service, it receives funding back. If it underpaid, it is
required to pay the Postal Service the difference. The mail
management
staff also computes the line office’s postage costs to determine
whether
each line office receives money back or owes additional funds. |
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Passing on Surplus
Supplies - We
would like to thank those offices that had extra supplies and sent them
to Rita Argueta, who passed them on to other offices that needed
them.
Since all of the stand alone meters are either the Models 6902 or 6905,
they will accept the same supplies. In the future, if your office
has too many supplies such as ink or tape, please send them to Rita
Argueta
at:
OFA531, Rm 8533,
SSMC4
1305 East West Highway
Silver Spring, MD 20910 |
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