Value Payable Post is an important and popular traditional service from Department Of Posts (DoP). The value payable system is designed to meet the requirement of persons who wish to pay for articles sent to them at the time of receipt of the articles and also to meet the requirement of traders and others who wish to recover the value of articles supplied by them through the post office.
The trader or seller of a product who uses the VPP service and hands over the item to the Postal Department which in turn delivers it to the customer after collecting the value of the product specified by the supplier. The Money is sent back to the supplier through money order.
Small and medium enterprises use this service extensively to sell and market their products. Readers Digest is one of such enterprise. With the induction of IT in to various operations this service also underwent transformation in the recent past.
In the traditional set up it is the post offices and the sellers were put in to inconvenience than the customer. The seller or sender of the item has to fill up money order forms for each item at the time of handing over to the P.O and later watch and account for all these money orders to ensure that he gets the money back out of his selling. The Post office too has to process all these money orders and send back to the sender. One cannot imagine the cumbersome process and difficulty if the trader executes thousands and thousands of orders.
The DoP had launched rather refined the traditional service in Jan 2010 to bring cheers to the traders. Under the new method the traders who wish to avail the service should approach the Divisional Superintendent of Post offices in his locality and apply for the service. He will be allotted an ID and the nearest delivery post office will be the place where he can avail the service. He can then hand over the items and list of the customer who it should be delivered either in a hard copy or in a softcopy. The VPP articles will be booked and dispatched to its destination by the post offices. On booking an electronic message will also go the delivery post office. On receipt of the e-VPP article at the delivery post office it delivers and collects the value and accounts in the post office. This is a computerized process which is processed with already available electronic message and the payment sent back to the original office. In this way the booking office gets the payment details from all the offices of delivery of the item. The bill is consolidated and settled to the trader according to the period specified by along with the details of customer to whom it was paid and value of item. The trader also gets value additions like Up to date online MIS of complete transactions, items delivered, pending etc.
It was made possible by tweaking the age old process with the technology already running in the post offices. The service is called e-VP now universally available in around 11800 computerized departmental post offices across the country if the post office has already complied with the Directions of the Postal Directorate. However the DoP has not withdrawn the conventional VPP service which is still available. 