How To Use Letter Service

Letter Service is intended to help you automate the processing of large batches of Debtor notices and simple Debtor letters. For instance, you may have 10,000 First Notices to print. Letter Service can handle this easily! Letter Service can also process lists, such as transactions for a particular Debtor.

Once you have your letters formatted the way you wish them to look, you can send templates to a Letter Service Bureau and supply them with a data file so that they can print your letters.

Before starting with the setup and usage of the Letter Service you must be able to say yes to the following points:

Can you print a letter from Collect! to one or more debtors?
Do you know and understand how to set up letter contacts for one or more debtors?
Have you previously contacted your preferred Letter Service provider? ( Contacts at the end of this document.)
Are you able to save a file for later retrieval to send to your Letter Service House by a method agreed upon with them? For example, email attachment or internet file upload.
Have you purchased the Letter Service module for Collect!?

When you use Letter Service, instead of printing batch letters to your printer, Collect! writes the letter data to a file that you may then using a method agreed upon with the service bureau of your choice. For example, email attachment or internet file upload. Of course, the service bureau needs to know what each of your letters looks like. So before the service bureau can print your letters, you must send an actual copy of the letters to them so that they can enter the text of your letters into their computer system. Each letter format that you send to the service bureau must be given a unique letter number so they can pick the correct letter template when they print your data. The number for each letter must be entered in Collect! as well, when you set up your letter service reports. This is explained below, with examples.

Letter Service Header File

You may be required by the Letter Service Bureau to provide a header file. This means you would need a file named Tuheader.fle in your Collect! executable folder, typically CV11\bin. This file is read when a letter batch is printed to letter service. The file's contents are prepended to the file being generated. The file is sometimes provided by the Letter Service or you need to create it yourself using the information they provide to you.

Creating a Tuheader.fle if one is not provided

Tuheader.fle Header File

Edit instructions:

Change the first line to the ID number provided by your service bureau.

Change the company information lines to reflect your information

Please note that there is one empty line after ***END OF HEADER***

Save file as Tuheader.fle and place in your CV11\bin folder.

Use only a plain text editor such as Notepad to modify or create this file

Creating A Debtor Letter For Letter Service

Select Print from the top menu bar and then select Customize Printing, Edit Report Templates from the drop-down choices.

Print Menu - Edit Reports

This will display a list of all reports in your system.

Report Definition List

Select the first of the letters that you wish to send to a letter service bureau to open the Report Definition form for the letter. Now a screen should appear, as shown below, showing the Report Body with an OPTIONS button at the lower left hand corner.

Report Definition form

Select the OPTIONS button to open the Report Options form.

Report Options form

Enter a number in the Letter Number field, as shown. This number must be unique to this letter and must be consistent with the letter format and number you give to the letter service bureau. Select the OK button.

Only the letters with a number entered in the field labeled Letter Number will be picked up in the letter service batch. Letters with or without numbers may still be batch printed to your local printer.

Optionally, switch ON NCOA check if you have enabled this service with your letter service bureau. This alerts the bureau to do an address check on any account that you have flagged as Address Not OK. That means the check box labeled Address OK is not switched ON for the account on the Debtor form because the address is not verified.

This letter must now be scheduled as a Letter contact for your accounts. Once this is done, you can print scheduled batch letters to go to the letter service bureau follow the directions below.

Running Letter Service On Scheduled Letters

To print the file to send to your service bureau, follow the steps outlined below.

1. Select Print from the top menu bar and then select Daily Reports, Letter Service Bureau from the drop-down choices and the submenu.

Print - Daily Reports - Letter Service Bureau

2. Now you should be looking at a screen similar to the one below.

Batch Letter Options

The Batch Letter Options form lets you choose from a number of options for your file, giving you more control over your letter service processing routine.

If you select Set options in advance, you can eliminate prompts for Address Not OK, Cosigners and Closed accounts. This enables you to set up the batch process and continue with other work (rather than monitoring every step, in case a prompt appears that you have to respond to.) Press F1 for more help on the Batch Letter Options form.

3. When you are ready, select the PRINT button on the Batch Letter Options form to continue.

Now you will be given printing options for this batch. Some selections have already been made for you since this is a letter service batch, as shown in the screen shot below.

Report Output Options

By default, the output file will be saved in CV11\bin\global\masterdb\letters. You can change this as needed to a folder of your choice. Just be careful to note where the file is going to be saved so that you can find it!

4. Select the PRINT button to print your letter service file.

NCOA Check Through Letter Service

The NCOA check (National Change Of Address) is an option that your letter service bureau may provide, but there is normally an additional fee for each address the letter service attempts to verify.

In Collect! NCOA check is enabled through the Report Options form for a particular report as mentioned above. When NCOA check is enabled for a letter, Collect! will output to the letter service file, an NCOA code for every debtor or cosigner letter printed to an unverified address. This alerts the letter service bureau to do an NCOA check on the given address.

If you do not enable NCOA check and you print to a debtor with an unverified address, you will be prompted as below, if you have chosen 'Prompt when there is a choice' in Batch Letter Options.

Bad Address Prompt

If you select YES, this debtor's information will be included in the letter service file, but without the NCOA code. If you select NO, the debtor will be ignored and not output to the file. If you select ALL, all unverified addresses will be printed with no further prompts.

You may choose to set options in advance and select Print to unverified addresses in Batch Letter Options to print to all unverified addresses with no further prompts.

#K#03 Segment

The #K#03 segment is an addition to the letter service module to match new file format standards handed down by letter service bureaus. This switch is enabled through the Report and Printer Setup form.

A letter sent to letter service with NCOA enabled will print letters to debtors with bad addresses preceded by the #K#02 segment. This tells the letter service that this debtor has a bad address. It also attaches a "D" for Debtor and "C" for cosigner to the File Number. For example, ^D1400^ for Debtor, or ^C1400^ for Cosigner.

The Dfilenumber and Cfilenumber are used by Collect!'s Import NCOA feature to update records returned from NCOA.

All other debtor letters print normally, with no special formatting. With the #K#03 Segment switch ON, debtors with bad addresses will still receive the #K#02 segment, but in addition, debtors with good addresses will now be preceded by the #K#03 segment. This means that even good addresses will have the Dfilenumber or the Cfilenumber, as described above. That way, you can also update good addresses when NCOA returns data.

When you use the Import NCOA option to update records after an NCOA check, Collect! expects to find the Debtor and Cosigner identifiers. These will be correct only if you have switched ON NCOA as described above. If you wish to check "OK" addresses as well, you need to insert the #K#03 segment as well.

Sending To Cosigners

If you chose 'Prompt when there is a choice' in the Batch Letter Options form, you will also receive a prompt asking you if you would like to send the letter to the cosigners, as well, if your debtor has cosigners.

Print To Cosigners Prompt

Select ALL to stop Collect! from prompting for each letter that is printed.

You can restrict printing to Cosigners if you only want to include records with "Class" set to "Cosigner." Please refer to Help topic, Report and Printer Setup for details.

Additional Prompts

You may receive additional popup questions or warnings depending on situations that Collect! encounters. Answer YES or NO, according to your requirements.

If you attempt to print a letter that does not exist, Collect! will ignore this request.

Mark Batch As Completed

This screen will ask whether you would like this letter batch marked as completed. If you select YES, this batch of letters will be marked as DONE and it will be removed from the print queue.

Prompt To Mark Contacts Done

A prompt will pop up telling you how many letters were printed to the file.

You will also be given the option of printing a summary report to an operator's WIP List. This is a useful way of keeping track of the success of your batch process. Select YES to view the list of operators, and make your choice. The next time you reload the WIP list for that operator, the Batch Summary Report will show up in their WIP.

Print Summary Report To WIP List

Address Not OK

If a Debtor or Cosigner was skipped because of a bad address, the Letter contact is not marked Completed. Rather, it is left In Progress with an indicator written to the contact's Attachment field. 0 indicates that the Debtor was skipped. 1 indicates that the Cosigner was skipped. If the Address OK switch is enabled at a future date, then this contact will be processed the next time you print your Letter Service file. Using the indicator as a safeguard, Collect! will not print the same letter twice to the same Debtor or Cosigner.

You can also view the Application Log in System, Diagnostics to determine which Debtors and/or Cosigners were skipped when the batch was processed.

Letter Service File

Now, if you would like to confirm that the letters that you wanted printed out to the service bureau were printed to the file, open up that file. You will have to navigate to the directory where you saved the file. In our example, this is the a:\ drive. This is the path that was displayed in the Report Output Options dialog above.

You should see something like below.

Letter Service File Contents

This is all the information that normally needs to be sent to the letter service bureau. The bureau will fill in the data in the appropriate locations. The NCOA code, if you selected to go that route, will be the first 5 characters for any account that had 'Address OK' switched OFF on the Debtor screen. The next group of characters is the account number, D represents Debtor, C Cosigner and are enclosed with the ^ symbol. The account number is followed by the letter number which is specified in your letter setup.

If you have enabled the switch 'Insert #K#03 segment' in the Report And Printer Setup, your file would look slightly different.

Letter Service File With #K#03 Segment

In this case, the NCOA code will be #K#03 for each account that does not have a #K#02 segment.

Sending Your File To Letter Service

Now you should be ready to send your data to the Letter Service Bureau.

For information about letter services we have listed a few below:

Diversified Data and Communications Inc.

Diversified Data and Communications Inc.
10811 Northend
Ferndale, Michigan 48220
Toll-Free: 1-800-356-8561
Tel: 248-399-0715
Fax: 248-399-0298
www.divdat.com

Focus 1

Focus1
Voice: 313 - 937 - 1511
www.focus1data.com

Dantom

Dantom Systems, Inc.
Voice: 248 - 888 - 7455
Fax: 248 - 888 - 7459
www.dantomsystems.com

If you have formatting requirements that exceed what has been discussed above, please refer to How To Format Letter Service Data Files. This will help you begin to design more advanced Letter Service solutions.