Franking Machines

Franking your mail can make a huge difference to your business. It can save you time and money, it can add a professional appearance to your mail, it is a great promotional tool and it makes it easy to use the best mailing option for whatever you are posting.

• Speed – Franking is the fastest way of dealing with your mail. Compared with franking, alternative methods of paying for postage like manually sticking on self-adhesive stamps are painful, labour intensive activities that are somewhat out of place in the modern world.


• Money – Time is of course money, so by saving on labour you will already be saving, but there is much more to save than that. Postage has become expensive over recent years and there is no sign that the trend won’t continue. With a franking machine, you can save a considerable amount in postage costs - in some cases up to almost a third. We review costs saving in detail further along this guide.


• Expenditure - Franking machines also keep a record of your postage costs, helping you take control of them. This makes recording postal costs much easier for your accountant so you pay the correct amount of corporation and reclaim VAT on non-rated postal items.


• Image & Branding - Franking your mail is a great way to present a professional image to your clients. Most franking machines allow you to customise the appearance of your franking print - adding your company name, your logo and other information such as your return address. This will appear on every item that you send, whatever size of envelope or parcel, and benefit your brand by making you instantly recognisable to your customers the moment they glance at their post.


• Marketing – In addition to providing useful contact information and having your brand on every item of mail you send, you can also add a marketing message. It might be a specific advertisement, information on a special promotional offer or in fact any message you want to send. The beauty of this is that this powerful marketing tool is entirely free.


• Flexibility – Whether you wish to send your post by regular snail mail, recorded or special delivery, international post, business collections or any other of the expanding range of business postal options, you can pay for it using your franking machine. With some franking machines you can also separate out postal items that are free from VAT from those that are VAT rated.

Return on Investment with a Franking Machine

While it is difficult to assign a monetary value to items such as branding and lending a more professional image to your business along with labour and management savings, we can at least compare the cost of a franking machine with the savings you can expect to make on postage.

Franking machines come in many different specification levels and this is reflected in their costs. While a simple franking machine can be purchased for under £1,000, high end franking machines can cost anything up to £10,000 and some high volume franking machines can cost over £20,000.

Many businesses prefer to rent their franking machines which has two advantages: you avoid the high capital cost and the rental charge will appear on your P&L account as a cost of sales which can be better than having a franking machine as a depreciating asset on your balance sheet. Rental charges are typically from around £20 a month to £500 a month.

Postal savings on franking are always subject to change, but typically you can save 34% on second class mail and 15% on first class. For large letters, the savings are 26% second class and 23% first class. Savings on parcels are around 10% to 11%.

You also need to take account of consumables such as ink cartridges.

You can find more information on franking machine costs and prices in our franking machine prices guide.