LOSSES ARE LESS. USPS losses for Fiscal Year 2002 were only half of what was budgeted, thanks to aggressive cost management. PMG Jack Potter told the USPS Board of Governors at yesterday's monthly meeting that the budgeted deficit of $1.35 billion was cut in half, to $676 million.

Chief Financial Officer Richard Strasser told the board, "This aggressive expense management came despite the fact that our delivery network grew by 1.77 million addresses." Strasser presented final FY 2002 finances as independently audited by Ernst & Young, LLP. He also noted that USPS achieved cost reductions of $1.45 billion, with total expenses of $67.4 billion, which was $185 million below FY 2001 expenses.

PMG Potter cited workhour reductions as the key to cost containment. "Workhours were reduced 78 million, or 23,000 career employees," he said, "and we accomplished this through attrition. Today we have about the same number of employees we had in 1995, even though we're delivering 22 billion more pieces of mail and have added 12 million more delivery addresses."

IT'S A HIT. "It's clear we have a hit on our hands," said USPS Vice President Nick Barranca, Product Development, describing Click-N-Ship to the Board of Governors yesterday. The easy-to-use online shipping service allows customers to mail without leaving their homes or offices. With Click-N-Ship, customers can create and print mailing labels — with or without postage — and pay via credit card.

Packages can be sent to both domestic and international addresses. For domestic shipments, customers can choose Priority Mail or Express Mail. For international destinations, Global Express Mail™ and Global Express Guaranteed are available.

"Customers have printed over 1.3 million shipping labels since the service was first introduced in May," said Barranca. More than a third of the Click-N-Ship customers have paid for their postage online, generating $2.3 million in postage from more than 413,000 shipping labels.