Recommended processes for Payreq Delivery

Payreq Delivery works best when the same few checks happen every run, rather than when something looks wrong. These are the routines Payreq recommends. Adapt them to your billing cycle and to who does what in your organisation.

Every bill run

1. Update your Contacts first. Everything downstream depends on this, including receiver-managed Subscriptions driven from your Contact data. See Managing Contacts in Payreq Delivery.
2. Check your Subscription position after the Contact update, not before. A list retrieved before the update will not reflect it. See Downloading Subscriptions.
3. Upload the documents. Through the console, or by SFTP if a mailhouse runs it for you. See Uploading Mail.
4. Check the Job processed cleanly before assuming anything was sent. See Understanding Job Statuses and Errors.
5. Review and approve, if the Review Mail Before Sending option is enabled for your account. Go to Mail and filter to Awaiting review. Use Approve for selected list items or Send from an individual item's detail. See Understanding Mail statuses.
6. Check the outcomes. Look at Error and Undeliverable, not just Sent.

If a mailhouse or print service provider runs your bill run, see Bill run procedures (Print Service Provider) for the fuller process, including the recommended split into a Standard and a Historical load.

After every run: review outcomes

Two views are worth opening after each run.

Error. These documents never reached a deliverable state. The most common cause is a Subscription that was cancelled while the document sat in Awaiting Review. See Mail placed into Error status.

Undeliverable. At least one channel had a problem. Check what succeeded before deciding what to do, because some undeliverable items were delivered another way. See Handling Undeliverable Mail.

Do not treat a quiet first day as success. A transient email bounce is only flagged after the fifth failed attempt, which can fall the day after the send.

Mark items Undeliverable Actioned once you have handled them, so the queue reflects real outstanding work.

Periodic review

Set a regular review cadence that suits how often your organisation sends documents. The console provides the reports and filters, but it does not prescribe a monthly or quarterly interval.

Delivery results. Compare this period against the last. A jump in undeliverables usually points at a data problem upstream rather than a Payreq problem. See Understanding Monthly Reports.

Subscriptions. Track new registrations and deregistrations, and follow up recipients whose registration attempts failed. See Registration Summary and Reviewing pending failed Subscriptions.

Payments, if you have them enabled. See Payments reports.

Shared Documents. Add anything new, and remove material that is now out of date. See Shared Documents.

User access. Remove people who have left, add new starters, and confirm the remaining permission levels still make sense. See Managing Users in Payreq Delivery.

Keeping Contact data clean

Most delivery problems are Contact data problems.

• Enter references consistently. Preserve leading zeroes and use the same identifier in your Contacts file, your bill file and your source system. A mismatch here is the most common cause of a document failing to match a recipient.
• Fix the record, not the symptom. Correcting a Contact after a failure stops the same failure next run. Re-sending without correcting it does not.
• Watch for duplicates. Two Contact records for one account produce inconsistent results.
• Review inactive records periodically. Old records that no longer correspond to a live account make every report harder to read.
• Ask about validation rules. Your Contact identifier may have a sender-specific validation rule set at onboarding, such as a fixed length. If you are unsure what applies to your account, ask Payreq rather than guessing from a sample file. See Understanding Contact Field Settings.

Bringing a new team member up to speed

1. Invite them. Settings, then the Account Permissions tab, then Invite User. See Managing Users in Payreq Delivery.
2. Set permissions per area. Contacts, Registrations, Mail and Settings can each be set to View only or Edit. Start with the minimum the role needs.
3. Set their notifications. Notification preferences are per user, so a new starter receives nothing until theirs are set. See User Notifications.
4. Point them at the right guides. For most roles: Accessing and navigating your Payreq Delivery account, Understanding Mail statuses, Handling Undeliverable Mail and Managing Contacts in Payreq Delivery.
5. Walk them through one real run alongside someone experienced, rather than leaving the first run to be their first look at the console.

When someone leaves

Remove their access the same way you granted it, and check two things that are easy to miss:

• whether any notification only they received now reaches nobody; and
• whether an API user or mailhouse user is about to be removed by mistake. An unfamiliar email address may belong to a mailhouse performing a scheduled function. Check before revoking it.

Related articles

• Your first bill run: with or without a print service provider
• Bill run procedures (Print Service Provider)
• FAQ and troubleshooting Payreq Delivery
• Handling Undeliverable Mail