CASS

:"CASS may refer to an abbreviation of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences or Cass Business School, London. CASS (Coding Accuracy Support System) enables the United States Postal Service to evaluate the accuracy of software that cleans and matches addresses. CASS Certification is offered to all mailers, service bureaus, and software vendors that would like the USPS to evaluate the quality of their address-matching software and improve the accuracy of their ZIP+4, carrier route, and five-digit coding accuracy.

For software vendors and service bureaus, CASS Certification must be renewed annually with the USPS to meet current CASS Certification cycle requirements.

CASS Certified products are listed in USPS literature and on its web site. CASS software will correct and standardize addresses. It will also add missing address information, such as ZIP Codes, cities, and states, to ensure the address is complete. Starting with 2007 Cycle L, CASS software will also perform Delivery Point Validation to verify whether or not an address is a deliverable address and access the USPS Locatable Address Conversion System to update addresses that have been renamed or renumbered. Cycle L also requires that the address be confirmed with the Delivery Point Validation before adding a +4 Code to the ZIP Code.

A correct address in turn saves the Postal Service time, money and man-power by reducing the volume of 1) non-deliverable mail; 2) unsorted mail; 3) mail that is deliverable, but requires extra effort to determine the proper location to deliver it to. [cite web | url = http://ribbs.usps.gov/files/CASS/CASS%5FCYCLE%5FL/CASS_CERT_REQ_MAILERS_GUIDE.PDF | title = CASS Certification Requirements, A Mailer's Guide | publisher = United States Postal Service | accessdate = 2007-07-27 | date = 2007-06-26 ] . Mailers who use CASS software may be able to qualify for discounted postage rates from the USPS.

An example of what CASS software will correct in an address:

The input of:

1 MICROWSOFT
REDMUND WA

Produces the output of:

MICROSOFT
1 MICROSOFT WAY
REDMOND WA 98052-8300

Here the street and city name misspellings have been corrected; street suffix, zip code and zip4 add-on have been added; and, in this case, the address was determined to be the location of a business.

References

External links

* [http://www.usps.com/ncsc/addressservices/certprograms/cass.htm USPS CASS web site]
** [http://ribbs.usps.gov/files/vendors/cassn01d.TXT List of CASS Certified Software Vendors]