Bill load types: Standard, Archive and Historical

Every bill load you send to Payreq Delivery carries a load type. The load type tells Payreq what to do with a document when the recipient does not have an active Subscription. Depending on the load type and upload method, the document may be archived, omitted from digital Mail or flagged for review.

You choose the load type in the header of an SFTP bill file, or from the Load type option where it is available on the console upload screen. The upload control and available options depend on the account. See Uploading Mail and Uploading Mail via SFTP for the upload process itself.

The console displays longer descriptions than the short load-type names used in files and in this guide:

• Standard: Mail delivered to active subscriptions
• Archive: Standard load but mail without an active subscription will be saved in archive
• Historical: Loading previously sent mail to be saved in archive

If no load type is supplied in an SFTP file, the load runs as Standard.

The three load types

Standard

Use a Standard load for a current bill run where every document in the file is expected to be delivered digitally. For a mailhouse run, filter the Standard file down to recipients with active Subscriptions before upload.

The result for a record without an active Subscription depends on how the Standard load is submitted:

• In a controlled console test on 2 September 2026, a two-document upload created one Mail item for the active Subscription and no Mail item for the inactive Contact. The Job completed as one processed document out of two and displayed Download Result. The control was present, but the downloaded file was not available for independent inspection during the test.
• For an SFTP bill file, the current Payreq Interface Specification says a Standard record without an active registration is flagged as an Error.

In either path, do not assume that an unsuccessful digital record has been archived, printed or posted. Review the Job and Mail results and follow the print-fallback process agreed for the run. See Mail placed into Error status for individual records that appear in Error.

Archive

Use an Archive load when you want Payreq to make the send-or-archive decision at processing time. Documents that match an active Subscription are sent; the rest are archived and are available to search and download later.

The trade-off is that the decision happens inside Payreq, often making it independent of the decision for what needed to be printed. If a recipient unsubscribes between your print decision and Payreq processing the file, the document is delivered digitally and no printed copy was produced for that bill run.

Historical

Use a Historical load to lodge a record of documents that were delivered outside Payreq, most often notices that your mailhouse has printed and posted. Every document in the file is archived. Nothing in a Historical load is dispatched digitally.

A Historical load does not replace the printed notice. It exists so that the printed population is visible and searchable in Payreq alongside the digital population.

Which to use

For a straightforward digital-only run, use Standard.

For archive-type services, where the same bill run produces both digital and printed notices, Payreq recommends two separate loads rather than one Archive load:

1. a Standard load containing only the recipients identified as having an active Subscription; and
2. a Historical load containing the printed population.

Splitting the populations before upload makes the intended treatment of each record explicit, and avoids the Archive-load risk described above, where a recipient can end up with neither a digital nor a printed copy. The full process is in Bill run procedures (Print Service Provider).

Working with two loads

• Give each load its own unique File ID. Reusing a File ID rejects the whole file.
• Where possible, use the same Campaign Name or Campaign Internal Reference on both loads, so the Standard and Historical loads can be recognised as parts of the same bill run.
• Review the processing results for both loads. For the Standard load, compare the processed count with the submitted population and work through any record that failed to load or could not be matched to an active Subscription. For the Historical load, confirm the printed records have been retained.
• Do not put a record in the Historical load if it was also submitted in the Standard load, unless Payreq has agreed to it.

Finding archived documents afterwards

Documents archived by an Archive or Historical load are searchable in the Mail archive and are counted in the Archived Bills report. See Understanding the Mail archive and Archived Bills.

Related articles

• Uploading Mail
• Uploading Mail via SFTP
• Mail placed into Error status
• Understanding the Mail archive