Post office (organizational unit)

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A post office is an organizational unit in companies and organizations, usually in the form of a department that is responsible for handling the mail . The post office is part of the administration of a company and has the task of supporting the core business processes by accepting, distributing and sending business letters or parcels .

General

The post office is a service point that performs central support tasks for several management points . The tasks of a post office are divided into three areas: Incoming mail, mail distribution and outgoing mail, which - depending on the size of the company - can be organized as an independent function within the post office.

inbox

The inbox usually comprises five steps in which the daily incoming letters from a company or an authority are processed:

  1. The incoming mail is picked up from the post office box . This enables the letters received to be processed at an early stage regardless of the delivery person 's delivery schedule .
  2. The letters are sorted according to the criteria “open” or “do not open”. Which letters are not opened depends on the requirements of the respective management. It is typical that the door should not be opened when addressing people from management level or special departments; Furthermore, if an employee is named in the first place of the address.
  3. The remaining letters are opened. Cutting machines are usually used for this.
  4. The documents are removed from the open envelopes, stapled together and given an incoming stamp indicating the date of receipt of the mail.
  5. The marked documents are assigned to the various specialist departments . This work step requires the greatest care and special knowledge of who is working on which subject areas in the company. In larger companies, this knowledge requires years of collaboration, because the letters are not always precisely addressed to the specialist department. Often times, the post office employees have to read the letters and use the content to determine who is responsible.

Mail distribution

The mail distribution represents a logistical represents process consists of three steps and often referred to as internal mail is called:

  1. The assigned incoming mail is brought to the clerk .
  2. Documents from the specialist departments are picked up and brought to other specialist departments for further processing ("in-house mail" in the narrower sense).
  3. The outgoing mail of the clerks is picked up and brought to the post office for dispatch.

Outbox

In the outbox , the letters to be sent are processed by post in three work steps:

  1. Each document is put in a shipping envelope ( envelope ).
  2. The postal charges (postage) are applied by postage stamps or franking machines .
  3. The letters ready for dispatch are handed over to a postal service provider.

These three areas of responsibility and the basic processes of the post office are constant, while the implementation dates from the time when letters were written by hand or with a typewriter. With the introduction of information technology (EDP), the individual work steps of a post office are subject to considerable changes. For the inbox, you should think about scanning certain letters and thus the possibility of electronic processing at remote locations.

See also