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Like most small-business owners, you probably spend a good part of your workday dealing with the mail. While the mail can bring good news, it can also be a time-consuming distraction. As your business grows and the amount of mail you receive each day increases, so does the amount of time you have to spend dealing with it. Fortunately, you can save that time by using a mail forwarding service.

A mail forwarding service provides benefits that you might not have considered. To gain a better understanding of how it can work for you, let’s take a look behind the scenes to see just what a mail forwarding service has to offer.

• Professional mailing address. A mail forwarding service gives you a dedicated professional address, letting your clients and customers feel confident that your business is well established and competitive. The location is staffed with trained employees who will take care of all your incoming mail.
• Mail call. Incoming envelopes received at your mail forwarding address are scanned by handlers, who will forward the images to you and await your instructions. Based on your response, items can be forwarded to you or to another person, returned, held or shredded. If you want to see an item, it will be opened and scanned for you, and you can print or save it, eliminating clutter on your desk.
• Document storage. Your mail forwarding service should include a storage system for your mail. Your account will include an online storage database that allows you to save your mail in various formats, allowing for easy access and file sharing. You may also have access to physical storage at the mail forwarding facility for correspondence that you want to keep for a certain length of time without needing additional storage space.
• Security. Choose a mail forwarding service that is a Certified Commercial Mail Receiving Agency authorized by the US Postal Service to accept mail on behalf of others. This will insure that you are dealing with a professional company that takes your privacy and security seriously. They will only open mail that you specifically ask them to, and will shred items at your direction. A reputable mail forwarding service will screen its employees and restrict access to mail to only those with proper authorization.
• Package forwarding. A mail forwarding service makes it easy to ship packages from various locations to different recipients. You can have packages from multiple vendors shipped to your mail forwarding address, where the staff will then forward the items to their final destinations. This saves you the time you’d ordinarily spend on shipping packages yourself.
• Check deposit. When you receive the scan that lets you know a check has arrived, you don’t have to wait until it’s forwarded to you to be deposited into your account. You can authorize your mail forwarding service to deposit the check for you, and then shred the physical check or send it on to you for your records.

This look at how a mail forwarding service works should make it clear that this is a perfect solution for business owners who want to save time and money. A mail forwarding service will let you feel secure in the knowledge that your mail is handled securely by dedicated professionals whose goal is to help you run your own business more smoothly.