Site News and System Status

professional automated customer billing & mailing services LATEST SITE STATUS & INFORMATION

This page is designed to inform our customers of all current up to the minute Billing Pros system status, system issues, changes, updates and important must read customer information.

System Status

5/1/08 New 1 Cent Increase for Stamped Mail and 2 Cent Increase for Bulk Mailing. We are going to see if we can go all the way to May 12th before we start the implementation of the new United States Postal Rate Increase and our Bulk Mailing Rate Increase. We have the new forms and software in place which was our number 1 concern in starting this earlier. This is not a guarantee that you will not see this increase before the May 12th date... but we will make every attempt to start the increase on the May 12th official date. Some of our contract jobs take us up to 3 days to complete and others 2 days and yet other 24 hours, so we will see how it goes.

4/25/08 United States Post Office - New Postal Rate. There will be a new postal rate increase May 12 2008. This not only effects the 1st class stamp rate but also raises our bulk mailing rate. Every time the United States Post Office raises their rate it usually winds up costing the bulk mailer in the form of less items being able to be discounted. We have never raised our prices since 1998 but this time, we in fact will be raising our bulk mailing prices 1 cents per piece starting May 1st 2008. We will also will be adding the New United States Postal 1 Cent increase May 1st 2008 even though it will not officially take place till May 12th. We are choosing May 1st for the increase because all our mailing forms and software must be changed and it would be impossible for us to change everything in one day.

What does this mean?
All Bulk Mail will see a 2 Cent increase.
All Stamped Mail will see a 1 Cent increase.

4/13/08 Data Upload Modified. We have added a small bar graph to the Data Up Loader. This will make it easier for our customers who send large data files to view their up load progress.

2/11/08 Billing and Mailing Completion Email for your Taxes. If you need your last 2007 Billing and Mailing Completion Email for your Taxes please call the office and we will send it to you. Please Do not email us regarding this issue...please have your username and password available when you call the office.

2/11/08 New Feature Added in the Online Billing Program. In the Run and Print Reports we have added View or Print Customer's Name, Address and Phone Sheet. This will be helpful for our customers who wish to take their customers name, address and phone numbers on the road with them or just to have a quick customer phone number look up sheet handy.

12/17/07 Please...try to mail all payments to Billing Pros strictly using 1st class regular mail. We have been having problems with several customers making payments to us using FedEx or USPS Next Day, Second Day Air etc. All Postal, FedEx and UPS Deliveries are made outside the Gated Perimeter of this facility....thus we do not know when the Post Office or FedEx Delivery Person is here. Since most times we are unavailable to sign for the payment package we usually just find a yellow slip saying that they will attempt to deliver the following day. When the following day comes around - we then find another note saying that we need to pick up the delivery at the Post Office. This will and does cause serious delays in mailing and processing of those customers. We simply do not have the time to stand around waiting to sign for a customers payment nor do we have the time to wait inline at the Post Office to pick up customers payments. Please...try to mail all your payments to us strictly using 1st class regular mail.

12/11/07 Electrical Overloading Problems Fixed / Upgraded. Since 12/8/07 we have been experiencing a complete electrical failure (website not affected) ...meaning no office cordless phones, no printing and no power to run the mail production equipment. 2 days of trouble shooting has indicated that the new printers and new mailing machinery that was added 12/8/07 was drawing more power than the existing electrical supply could handle...thus complete failure. This evening 12/11/07 we have completed installing the new main electrical panel that will easily support our newly installed equipment and future growth. We are sorry for any inconvenience our customers may have experienced during the past 3 days.

9/5/07 New Full Sheet Statements and Invoices for all customers. We have recently upgraded all our smaller customers to the Full Sheet (8 1/2 X 11) with detachable re-admittance portion. We have also upgraded all customers to the #10 Double Window Envelope with the #9 Return Envelope. We have completely fazed out the 1/3 Sheet Statement - Invoice as we did not feel this item to be a good example of the Billing Pros Quality and Professionalism. All our customers who had used the 1/3 sheet Statement - Invoice will notice a change not only in the size of their return envelops but also the look of the re-admittance portion. We suggest for the next billing cycle our customers bill themselves, that way they can see the new professional style their customers are receiving. We actually started this practice last month as a trial and had an overwhelming positive response from our customers. We will not increase our prices to any customer for this upgrade. It's just our way to say thank you and we appreciate your business.

8/22/07 Paper Billing Now & Email Billing Now error (10:20 AM Pacific Time)- We have fixed the problem and found it to be an issue with a Microsoft Patch that was installed yesterday.

4/9/07 Another Postal Rate Hike of 2 Cents on First Class Mail - Starting next Month (May 14) - As if a business' budget needed another hit, the U.S. Postal Service will raise postal rates May 14, leaving little more than five weeks to prepare for the increase. Billing Pros Customers will also be charged the additional 2 Cents on their mailings. We are not happy with the constant Postal Increases... Billing Pros appreciates our customers and has not changed our customers rates since 1998 but the post office seems to have little regard for their customers.

3/14/07 Since the recent time change and Microsoft Time Change Patch - we have been experiencing some Server Related issues regarding Down-Time. We are today changing our Primary Web Server from a NT 2000 Server to a NT 2003 Server. The NT 2003 Servers do not have the problem with the Microsoft Time Change Patch. We are sorry for any problems this has caused our customers and we are working as fast as possible on this change over....this should be completed 100% by 3/15/07 AM

5/17/06 History for 2004 to be removed. All customers please note: we will be removing all history for the years 2004 in the Automated Billing and Mailing Program. This is a way to guarantee continued low cost of your customer billing and mailing by reducing expensive server space while still allowing over 1 year of back checking of your customers billing and mailing history.

5/15/06 We are still having a lot of billing and mailing request come in from customers who either have no balance or not enough money to cover their billing and mailing request. From the beginning we have made it clear that no billing and mailings will be sent out unless customers have enough money in their account to cover their billing and mailing requests.
The "Billing and Mailing Completion" emails we send are very detailed and that's why it's so important to make sure we have your correct email address in your account information. It is our customers responsibility to monitor their Account Balances and to notify us when they change their email address.

5/11/06 Inactive Accounts will be deleted. All accounts that have $0.00 balance and have been inactive for over 1 month will be deleted unless otherwise notified. If you are a active paper billing and mailing user whose billing cycle is bi-monthly, quarterly or yearly you must maintain a positive balance. Billing Pros will no longer allow $0.00 account balances for bi-monthly, quarterly or yearly customers.

Billing Pros servers are currently being reset 10:00 PM Pacific Time. This usually takes about 5 minutes to run all scheduled maintenance tasks. Please try to avoid using the Billing Pros System at that time.

Our Smiley Face Legend:

= system is working perfect with no problems.
= system is being worked on, updated or experiencing problems.
= system has new features, changes or important customer information.

As always, "we thank you for your business"
The Programming Department

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