In addition to NZ Post’s annual price increases that came into effect on 1 July 2020, there are two other key changes to bulk mail which could increase your postage costs. This was the first stage of a two-stage roll out of NZ Post changes. The second, much larger change comes into effect on 1 February 2021. 

Here’s a summary of changes:

Previous system (up until 1 July 2020)

• A Statement of Accuracy (SOA) of at least 80% is required
• A lodgement file (LMF) is uploaded when lodging Volume Post (VP) and GoFlexi (GF), NOT PrintPost (PP) and Adcard
• Pricing is broken into Zones: A – D:
  • Zone D includes “rural” records and those with an incorrect or missing postcode

From 1 July 2020 (current at time of publishing this post)

• Statement of Accuracy (SOA) of any accuracy percentage will qualify you for a better discount
• A lodgement file (LMF) is uploaded when lodging VP and GF, AND PP and Adcard
• Pricing is broken into Zones: A – D plus Invalid Postcode (IPC) for VP, GF and Adcard
• PrintPost pricing is broken into IPC and VPC zones only
• IPC ‘Invalid Postcode’ records will have a higher postage rate than Zone D
• IPC ‘Invalid Postcode’ now includes records with any of the following:
  • A missing postcode
  • Incorrect postcode (incorrect Postcode to delivery type or incorrect city/suburb to Postcode mapping)
  • Invalid Postcode type for address (i.e. Rural, Urban, Box/Bag)

From 1 February 2021

• NO annual SOA required
• The SOA will be replaced by a ‘per mailing’ analysis called Address Accuracy Percentage (AAP). The AAP has the same accuracy requirements as SOA
• With AAP, each mailing is analysed on its own accuracy merits and postage is charged accordingly
• A lodgement management file (LMF) is uploaded when lodging VP, GF, PrintPost and Adcard
• NZ Post will analyse the LM file:
  • Stage 1. Any IPC records (incorrect or no postcode) will automatically get priced with a higher rate and removed from the next stage of analysis
  • Stage 2. A compliance level (AAP %) will be determined for remaining records in the file
  • Stage 3. These remaining records will be assigned zones (A – D) based on postcode and priced as per the AAP level
• The more valid records you have in your data the lower your postage costs will be.

Example:

A data file of 1000 records has 100 with incorrect or no postcodes
These 100 are priced at the highest (IPC) rate

The remaining 900 records have 800 valid records and 100 non compliant records.
This returns an Address Accuracy Percentage of 88.9%

All these records, whether they are valid or invalid (remembering we have excluded those with no or missing postcode) are then priced based on their postcode zone (A-D) and 88.9% “AAP” ie SOA3 (current) or A3 (from 1 July 2020)