Our frequently asked questions

A. Postcode Anywhere is a Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) accredited retailer. We are also an ISIS (Internet Shopping is Safe) accredited member of the IMRG.

A. Yes. We are accredited to ISO 27001: 2005 – the international Standard for data security.

A. Yes we have. A copy of our Quality statement is available here.

A. Absolutely. The address cleanser takes the input you provide and, after making matches, returns the results according to the Royal Mail Postcode Address File (PAF®). This means you will always get consistently formatted results, even if there wasn’t consistency in the input.

A. The time taken to run an address data cleanse obviously depends on the number of records in the file being cleansed, but it also depends on the quality of the data inputted. You can, however, expect your file to be cleansed at a rate of up to 100 cleanses per second, or 360,000 records an hour.

A. Yes you can. We can cleanse the data against additional datasets in-house for you. Simply contact us and we can discuss your requirements.

A. No, the contact address cleansing service will simply append the matching Royal Mail addresses in columns to the right of the addresses you currently have. You can then simply choose which parts of your addresses you want to replace with those returned by our service.

A. The address cleansing works by trying to match the components of the address submitted against the Royal Mail Postcode Address File (PAF®) database. As you will appreciate, an address which has all of the address lines present is likely to be matched, whereas an address containing just address line one and a postcode will be much more difficult to match. For this reason, we rank the results with a confidence ranking. If an address is of very poor quality, then the match we make against PAF® could, in some cases, be incorrect. “Rank A” means a very high-quality match and you can be confident the result is correct. A “RANK U” match indicates the address is so bad that we cannot find a match. We usually suggest cleansing an address against Ranks A-C or Ranks A-D, though this is down to personal preference, which is why we give you the choice.

A. Within your key settings you have the option to limit our service to only accept requests on that key that are coming from specified IP addresses. This is a security feature to prevent your key from being used anywhere other than where you intended. If you set this up and then get this error message it means an attempt has been made to use the service from another IP. The IP address will be detailed in the table in the email.

A. This error is generated if you are using Royal Mail PAF® user licences and you are trying to use it on more machines than you are licensed to do so. If you receive this error regularly, please speak to us about buying more licences.

A. This means your account has run out of credit. An 'error message' email will be generated when a user tries to do a look-up. The solution is to log into your account and top-up with credit or call us on 0800 047 0493 (09.00-17.30 UK time).

A. Within your key settings you have the option to limit our service to only accept requests on that key that are coming from specified website addresses. This is a security feature to prevent your key from being used anywhere other than the site you intended. If you set this up and then get this error message it means an attempt has been made to use the service from another website. The website address will be detailed in the table in the email.

A. This error will be generated whenever you try and do a look-up using a key that has been deleted, or has expired. Licence keys can be deleted through your account online; if you do this by mistake you’ll need to contact us to get them reinstated. With the annual user licences available for the Royal Mail's Postcode Address File (PAF®) data this error will be displayed if you have not renewed and the licence has expired.

A. Each per-click licence key has a setting that dictates the total credit it can consume from the account on a single calendar day. This is a security setting to help protect your credit from being consumed too quickly. It can be changed within the edit wizard of the licence key in question. If you are using a user licence key then the daily limit will be set at the time of purchase, in accordance with our fair usage policy.

A. The service uses ACORN® data, which has demographic data for every UK postcode.

A. ACORN® data enables you to gain a better understanding of your customers or leads and categorise them across a range of classifications, according to their postcode areas.

It is typically used to segment marketing communications in order to differentiate messages according to customer type. As well as giving a general profile according to income and lifestyle, ACORN® data will even suggest which type of publications a certain demographic will read, allowing for more intelligent marketing spend. Read this Customer Profiling case study to find out more.

A. As with many of the services we provide, Customer Profiling is available on a pay-per-click basis.

A. When submitting a postcode to the ACORN® service, you will get three things back: a group, type and category. These will give you a broad overview of the type of person likely to be living at that postcode. The combination of the three pieces of information will also allow you to derive more detailed information on geo-demographic or lifestyle characteristics.

A. The filter works by filtering out results that have any element of the address matching what is entered in the filter box. For example, if you have searched for addresses in "Smith Street" in an attempt to find "Smith House" then typing "Smith" into the filter box will appear to not filter the results. The reason is simply that all of the addresses will contain "Smith" in the street name.

The solution is to enter something that is unique to the address that you are looking for, or to change how the filter works. The filter can look purely at the building and organisation fields instead of all fields in the address. To make this change go to Tools > Options > Interface.

A. Payment Validation, Customer Profiling and Address Cleansing from Postcode Anywhere are tools which will only work with a pay-as-you-go credit pack and licence key. If you are using a user licence key, these services will not be available to you. To see them, go to Tools > Options from the main look-up window and enter a per-click licence key.

A. You probably don't have administrative privileges on your PC, or the installation folders are protected. To install Postcode Anywhere, you must have local admin rights on the machine and you must be able to write to certain Windows folders. Logging into the machine as an administrator and trying again should solve the problem.

A. By default, the search box will treat words without commas as a company name. To search by street enter the search text as street, town. Alternatively, use the Advanced Search window.

A. Yes. Postcode Anywhere Client recogniser rules will work with just about any application. If you have a 16-bit application containing a window-within-a-window, you may find that the "Wait for the application to become active / Wait until I've found an address" step doesn't work properly until you click into the application.

If this is the case, change this step to a simulate key strokes step and set the key value to Alt + 1. This should set focus correctly in your application.

A. When you start the desktop client software, it will automatically minimise to your system tray (by the clock at the bottom right). The icon you are looking for is an envelope with a magnifying glass hovering over it. To open the client up simply double-click on the icon and enjoy!

A. Yes. Go to View > Address and the address window will reappear at the bottom.

A. If you have a rule that is not working properly you need to edit it. In the main search window go to Recogniser > Rules and double-click on the rule that you need to change.

A. We are resellers of the Royal Mail PAF® database and as such cannot make changes to the address data. If you spot any mistakes or omissions in the data you can notify Royal Mail via addressmaintenance@royalmail.com. They will be able to update the database and we will be notified of the change early the next morning in the next update.

A. No. Rather than using the spacebar you can type a question mark (?) after typing a postcode to get the same effect. The hotkey can also be used to trigger a look-up - e.g. pressing Ctrl + Y.

To change the hotkey and disable the spacebar trigger go to Recogniser > Settings from the main search window.

A. Yes, the status bar will give you this information. To view the status bar go to the "View" menu in the Postcode Anywhere Desktop Client and click the "Status Bar" option. The status bar appears at the bottom of the search window.

A. Yes. Use the deployment tool that is installed alongside the client software.

A. When ‘straightline’ is selected for distance calculations a time cannot be returned for the journey, therefore all times will be returned as ‘0’.

A. Either. Depending on your requirements, you can configure your search to return straight line distances or road travelled distances. You can also get coordinate data from us, and calculate straight line distances yourself.

A. Choosing ‘shortest’ will calculate the distance while trying to keep the distance travelled to a minimum. Choosing ‘quickest’ will take into account average speeds and calculate the route with the shortest time necessary. These parameters are only relevant when calculating the road travelled distances.

A. The dataset we have contains the average speed data for each road. This means that we can predict a journey time according to realistic travelling speed. Of course, the actual journey time will depend on the individual driver and the road conditions at the time the journey is taken.

A. Email Validation from Postcode Anywhere runs several checks to validate email addresses. Having run a syntax check we look at the domain server to make sure that it exists.

A. Full documentation on implementing email validation with our address management solution can be found on the relevant web service implementation page.

A. Yes! We provide a free, no-obligation trial of our services. Simply register and follow the “Set up your account” wizard. Everything is quick and easy to install and we will be happy to help if you need it.

A. This depends on a number of things, including both the service you are accessing and your internet connection. Typical response times are less than 40 milliseconds.

A. Service continuity is exceptionally important to us. That's why we've taken considerable steps to ensure that Postcode Anywhere is always available:

• 2 completely autonomous data centres
• Load balanced servers in each data centre
• Data centres employ fully diverse routing and multiple carriers
• Automatic failover between servers and between data centres
• No single point of failure

All this means that even a catastrophic failure of a data centre can be tolerated and will not impact on the availability of Postcode Anywhere. Traffic will simply reroute to the other data centre within 60 seconds.

A. Within reason, Postcode Anywhere support is free. We provide phone and email support during working hours (08.45-17.30 UK time) five days a week. We also offer limited email support at the weekends.

A. A comprehensive list of the error messages and their resolutions can be found here. If that doesn’t help, you can always contact support via email or on 0800 047 0493 and we’ll be happy to help you.

A. Yes, you can add more than one person to your “Contact” details. If different people in your company deal with the service - e.g. your accounts department and your website developer, it makes sense for them to receive emails that relate to their job function. Within reason, you can add on as many contacts as you like by logging in and clicking on “Account Settings”.

A. There is no obligation to keep using our service. Annual user licences will simply stop working, as will pay-as-you-go credit. We do not provide refunds for any unused credits. If you have been supplied with raw data, in order to comply with Royal Mail licensing you will need to complete a Data Destruction Form - confirming that you won’t use the data once your licence expires. Please contact us for more information.

A. Please contact us if you don't know, or have forgotten, your account code or password. We should be able to find them from your company name or postcode.

A. It’s important that we hold the right details about your account to keep the service running smoothly. You can amend and update your information by logging in to your account and clicking on the “Account Settings” button. Alternatively, if you contact us, we can update your details for you.

A. Whether you want to use straightforward geocoding, assign leads to sales representatives or locate contacts geographically, the geographic services can help you. There are methods available to cover a number of different requirements.

A. We can provide international coordinate data for most major trading countries around the world.

A. The geographic services are paid for on a pay-as-you-go basis. All pricing information can be found on the website.

A. There are a couple of reasons why we cannot return coordinates for an address. Firstly if it is a PO Box they do not have coordinates as they have no physical location. Secondly, it may be a new address which has not be updated with the dataset which we get from our data providers. If the address is neither a PO Box or new then please contact us and we will investigate for you.

A. You can generate ‘best guess’ property level coordinates. The system will take a house number and a postcode, and predict where within the length of that postcode the property appears. As the data does not contain information on exactly where each house within a postcode lies the results won’t always represent the exact property location. Geocoding at this level consumes an extra credit.

A. The default geocoding service will give you a central point of a postcode, accurate to 100m.

A. Postcode Anywhere is an authorised reseller of Royal Mail's Postcode Address File (PAF ®) and, as such, we have to ensure that we comply with their licensing terms. Use of address validation in different areas of your business - e.g. in your website, in a contact centre and in the company intranet, each need their own licence to comply with Royal Mail. Please contact us so we can advise the most cost-effective option for your business.

A. All our licences are valid for a year. We will automatically invoice you when your licence is due for renewal (typically around 60 days before to give you plenty of time to process payment).

A. No. All the prices published on our website include the cost of the fee that is payable to the data provider. We will pay this to them on your behalf.

A. No you don’t. Many Postcode Anywhere services work on a pay-per-click (PPC) basis, so you buy credit that’s shared by everyone that needs it. If you need user licences, then you need the correct number of licences for the number of staff using the service. We can advise you of the most cost effective option if you contact us.

A. The data that we provide to you is owned by other providers including Royal Mail, Ordnance Survey and Collins Bartholemew. As an approved reseller, Postcode Anywhere must ensure our customers comply with the terms of business of our data providers. This is why you might need to sign an extra licence agreement.

A. You certainly can! Pins can be added into your map at no extra cost.

A. It is possible to plot a route from the routing server onto a map. The routing service will return the polyline for the route, which you can then pass into your instance of the map to be displayed as a route.

A. Our service is run from 2 completely different UK data centres. This is vital to maintaining the highest levels of reliability and availability. We also have a very comprehensive security system that operates at every level. Our 'active management' system constantly monitors every account and every transaction to identify unusual patterns. That way we can proactively block any unwanted or fraudulent activity instantly.

A. Absolutely. If you want to host your data in the cloud, MyTables will take an Access database or Excel sheet as a starter. You can also upload data from any data source that supports ODBC. If you want to externalise the data then MyFeeds just needs an ODBC connection and it'll do the rest.

A. Yes. We hope to continually extend the services that MyServices can access.

A. MyServices combines the best of databases like SQL and MySQL with the simplicity and scalability of cloud services. MyServices makes it easy for you get access to your data in lots of different places and applications. You can use MyServices to host the data in the cloud or you can keep your data where it is and MyServices will take care of making it available to anyone, anywhere.

A. MyTables supports most of the SQL languages including joins and complex where clauses. Group by and aggregate functions aren't currently supported although that is planned.

A. Our system does not contain information on individual accounts, only rules that allow us to confirm whether the structure of an account number fits the sort code. Therefore, you will only ever receive information back regarding the sort code, with a confirmation against whether the account number would fit to that sort code.

A. Many banks use a central processing depot for their BACS and other transactions. Therefore a BACS check on a specific sort code may return the bank's central depot rather than the specific branch address.

A. This field contains more detail about the outcome of the validation process and describes reasons why validation failed or changes made to pass validation. ‘DetailsChanged’ indicates that the account and sort code should be changed for BACs submission (check ‘CorrectedAccountNumber’ and ‘CorrectedSortCode'). ‘CautiousOK’ is set where the sort code exists but no validation rules are set for the bank (very rare).

A. Getting the right county for an address can be a surprisingly complex and contentious issue.

Although many businesses still use the county field to identify sales areas, it is no longer required by Royal Mail as part of the address and, in consequence, is no longer supported by them.

The county field problem stems from the late 1970s when there were a series of boundary changes, especially around London. In the mid 1990s the situation became even more complex with the introduction of unitary authorities around the major cities. The government recognises counties on the basis of administrative authority - for example, Derby isn't actually in Derbyshire - at least administratively speaking!

Because Derby is a unitary authority, it is not administratively associated with Derbyshire, although it remains a geographic island within the county. Combine this complexity with the complete abolition of counties like Avon, and you can begin to understand that providing definitive County data is not as easy as it sounds.

For each part of the country, there are actually three types of county listed: Administrative (the strict top level administrative unit), Former Postal (as used by the Royal Mail in the mid 90s but not updated since and including places like Avon) and finally Traditional (as used before all the changes in the 1970s).

With this in mind, we have made significant changes to the county information that is provided by default as part of our service. Previously, we had taken the strict administrative approach, but we were aware that providing "Greater London" or "Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly" wasn't ideal. Therefore, from 26th July 2005, we changed the names that are returned to better reflect the county that is typically used in addressing.

Summary of changes

All unitary authorities will carry the county name of the geographic county they are situated in (e.g. Derby in Derbyshire etc.). London addresses will not carry the county information - for example, Greater London will be removed. This includes addresses with the postal town "London" and surrounding boroughs e.g. Wembley, Harrow etc. "Preserved" county names will be used for Wales. County names will be provided for 99% of mainland localities.

Options

If you have a specific requirement for using the former postal county, traditional county or admin county, these are still available through web services by calling the ListAliases method.

County list

• Aberdeenshire
• Angus
• Argyll and Bute
• Bedfordshire
• Berkshire
• Buckinghamshire
• Cambridgeshire
• Cheshire
• Clackmannanshire
• Clwyd
• Cornwall
• Cumbria
• Derbyshire
• Devon
• Dorset
• Dumfries and Galloway
• Durham
• Dyfed
• East Ayrshire
• East Dunbartonshire
• East Lothian
• East Renfrewshire
• East Riding of Yorkshire
• East Sussex
• Essex
• Falkirk
• Fife
• Gloucestershire
• Greater Manchester
• Gwent
• Gwynedd
• Hampshire
• Herefordshire
• Hertfordshire
• Highland
• Inverclyde
• Isle of Anglesey
• Isle of Wight
• Kent
• Lanarkshire
• Lancashire
• Leicestershire
• Lincolnshire
• Merseyside
• Mid Glamorgan
• Midlothian
• Moray
• Norfolk
• North Ayrshire
• North Lanarkshire
• North Yorkshire
• Northamptonshire
• Northumberland
• Nottinghamshire
• Orkney Islands
• Oxfordshire
• Perth and Kinross
• Powys
• Renfrewshire
• Scottish Borders
• Shetland Islands
• Shropshire
• Somerset
• South Ayrshire
• South Glamorgan
• South Lanarkshire
• South Yorkshire
• Staffordshire
• Stirlingshire
• Suffolk
• Surrey
• Tyne and Wear
• Warwickshire
• West Dunbartonshire
• West Glamorgan
• West Lothian
• West Midlands
• West Sussex
• West Yorkshire
• Wiltshire
• Worcestershire

A. Yes, we do! We provide data for most major trading countries (with more being added all the time) and build and support all our services in-house. Please see the Postcode Anywhere International FAQ section or the Postcode Anywhere International product page for more information.

A. The Postcode Address File (PAF)®/ data is owned and maintained by Royal Mail. We take and apply daily updates (around 5000 each day), to ensure the information you receive is as accurate as it is possible to be.

A. Postcode Anywhere provides the facility to capture full UK addresses from a postcode, or to search for a postcode/full address using part of the address. The service can be used in a website or integrated into any desktop application and is simple to set up and use.

A. Licensing for the Royal Mail's PAF® file depends on whether you’re using it within a website or an internal application. Information to help you find the licence to suit your requirements can be found on the pricing page.

A. Using Postcode Anywhere to validate and capture address details provides you with three main advantages. Firstly, it speeds up the process of entering addresses significantly for your operatives or customers because it cuts keystrokes by around 80%. Secondly, it makes sure that addresses in your database are in a standardised, consistent format, reducing the likelihood of duplicates. Thirdly, your database is populated with accurate addresses, so your deliveries and invoices will arrive at the correct letterbox.

A. When you pick an address, we normally open a copy of your form in the pop-up window to help copy the address to the main page. This is done because of the security system in web browsers that stops one website taking content from another. If the main page contains certain types of scripting, it may not open correctly, which then stops the address being copied across and the pop-up being closed. To solve this, you need to create a "custom handler" page to transfer the address from our site to your page. Instructions on creating handler pages can be found within the edit wizard of the key.

A. If you can't find an address, then the mostly likely reason is that it's new, and hasn't been added yet to the Royal Mail's PAF® dataset. We get updates daily from Royal Mail, so as soon as it is added to their database you should see the address reflected in our service. If your property is not new please contact us and hopefully we'll be able to help.

Remember, though, we can't make any actual changes to the data ourselves (because it's owned and maintained by Royal Mail), so if an address is missing or incorrect you should contact Royal Mail direct at addressmaintenance@royalmail.com.

A. The Postcode Anywhere web client works with a specific HTML form on a page. By default, it works with the first form on a page. If you have other forms on your page, the field list will be wrong. You can change the form that the web client "pop-up" looks at within the key settings after you've logged into your account. Switching it to the correct form on your page should cause the fields to be displayed correctly next time you run the "Set-up" process.

A. Postcode Anywhere offers both premise and street-level address look-ups. Premise-level address look-ups will return everything including the house name or number. The "street level" option will not return the house name or number. If you are not getting a house name or number when doing a lookup it may be the case you are either using a street-level licence or using one of our methods which return street-level data.

A. Yes, from the licence key area when you log in to your account you can choose to reset all the mappings for your look-up. This will make the button appear as ‘Set-up Postcode Anywhere’, and allow you to remap the look-up.

A. Yes, if you do look-ups on the postcode WR2 6NJ then credit will never be consumed when looking up the addresses in this postcode. However look-ups with this postcode still require credits on the account. Please contact Postcode Anywhere support to get test credit added if you are in development.

A. As well as validating overseas addresses, Postcode Anywhere International allows you to choose the language and format for the country in question, e.g. Cyrillic script. This means that any mailings sent to foreign addresses will be in the appropriate format and language, reducing the likelihood of misspellings or causing offence.

There are over 120 different address formats globally, and 30 different language scripts, so keeping global address data correct is no small task. Postcode Anywhere International also removes the need to spell all those tricky foreign words!

A. We charge for the service on a pay-per-click basis. The advantage is that you can access international addresses using credit, costing from £50 p.a. All pricing information can be found here.

A. Yes. We have a JavaScript control that will use the international addressing service and then switch over to Royal Mail's Postcode Address File (PAF®) data whenever a UK postcode is searched. This gives you the best coverage we have available. It can be easily integrated into your form by following the Postcode Anywhere International with PAF® tutorial.

A. The web client currently supports only UK and USA address look-ups. However, there are a number of other equally easy integration options for other countries. The first option is our SmartForm^TM which uses AJAX technology, automatically picking up the country - and it will populate the address in the correct format too! The second option is our address auto-complete; this is based around the SmartForm^TM but gives you a lot more flexibility. The third option is to use our web service; this gives you complete control over the look and feel of your integration. This can be accessed using SOAP, XML over HTML or AJAX. Tutorials and documentation on all three options can be found on our Postcode Anywhere International implementation tutorials page.

A. The list of countries Postcode Anywhere International covers is constantly growing, but the countries we currently support are:

• Afghanistan
• Åland Islands
• Albania
• Algeria
• Andorra
• Angola
• Anguilla
• Antigua and Barbuda
• Argentina
• Armenia
• Aruba
• Australia
• Austria
• Azerbaijan
• Bahamas
• Bahrain
• Bangladesh
• Barbados
• Belarus
• Belgium
• Belize
• Benin
• Bermuda
• Bhutan
• Bolivia, Plurinational State Of
• Bonaire, Saint Eustatius and Saba
• Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Botswana
• Brazil
• Brunei Darussalam
• Bulgaria
• Burkina Faso
• Burundi
• Cambodia
• Cameroon
• Canada
• Cape Verde
• Cayman Islands
• Central African Republic
• Chad
• Chile
• China
• Christmas Island
• Cocos (Keeling) Islands
• Colombia
• Comoros
• Congo
• Congo, the Democratic Republic of the
• Costa Rica
• Côte D'ivoire
• Croatia
• Cuba
• Curaçao
• Cyprus
• Czech Republic
• Denmark
• Djibouti
• Dominica
• Dominican Republic
• Ecuador
• Egypt
• El Salvador
• Equatorial Guinea
• Eritrea
• Estonia
• Ethiopia
• Falkland Islands (Malvinas)
• Faroe Islands
• Fiji
• Finland
• France
• French Guiana
• French Polynesia
• Gabon
• Gambia
• Georgia
• Germany
• Ghana
• Gibraltar
• Greece
• Greenland
• Grenada
• Guadeloupe
• Guatemala
• Guernsey
• Guinea
• Guinea-Bissau
• Guyana
• Haiti
• Holy See (Vatican City State)
• Honduras
• Hong Kong
• Hungary
• Iceland
• India
• Indonesia
• Iran, Islamic Republic Of
• Iraq
• Ireland
• Isle of Man
• Israel
• Italy
• Jamaica
• Japan
• Jersey
• Jordan
• Kazakhstan
• Kenya
• Kiribati
• Korea, Democratic People's Republic of
• Korea, Republic of
• Kuwait
• Kyrgyzstan
• Lao people's Democratic Republic
• Latvia
• Lebanon
• Lesotho
• Liberia
• Libya
• Liechtenstein
• Lithuania
• Luxembourg
• Macao
• Macedonia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of
• Madagascar
• Malawi
• Malaysia
• Maldives
• Mali
• Malta
• Martinique
• Mauritania
• Mauritius
• Mayotte
• Mexico
• Moldova, Republic of
• Monaco
• Mongolia
• Montenegro
• Montserrat
• Morocco
• Mozambique
• Myanmar
• Namibia
• Nauru
• Nepal
• Netherlands
• New Caledonia
• New Zealand
• Nicaragua
• Niger
• Nigeria
• Norfolk Island
• Norway
• Oman
• Pakistan
• Panama
• Papua New Guinea
• Paraguay
• Peru
• Philippines
• Pitcairn
• Poland
• Portugal
• Qatar
• Réunion
• Romania
• Russian Federation
• Rwanda
• Saint Barthélemy
• Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha
• Saint Kitts and Nevis
• Saint Lucia
• Saint Martin (French part)
• Saint Pierre and Miquelon
• Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
• Samoa
• San Marino
• Sao Tome and Principe
• Saudi Arabia
• Senegal
• Serbia
• Seychelles
• Sierra Leone
• Singapore
• Sint Maarten (Dutch part)
• Slovakia
• Slovenia
• Solomon Islands
• Somalia
• South Africa
• Spain
• Sri Lanka
• Sudan
• Suriname
• Svalbard and Jan Mayen
• Swaziland
• Sweden
• Switzerland
• Syrian Arab Republic
• Taiwan, Province Of China
• Tajikistan
• Tanzania, United Republic Of
• Thailand
• Timor-Leste
• Togo
• Tonga
• Trinidad and Tobago
• Tunisia
• Turkey
• Turkmenistan
• Turks and Caicos Islands
• Tuvalu
• Uganda
• Ukraine
• United Arab Emirates
• United Kingdom
• United States
• Uruguay
• Uzbekistan
• Vanuatu
• Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic Of
• Viet Nam
• Virgin Islands, British
• Wallis and Futuna
• Yemen
• Zambia
• Zimbabwe

A. Please contact us to confirm your non-VAT-able status and we’ll re-issue your invoice without VAT immediately. We will also flag your account so you don’t get charged VAT in future.

A. You can log in, then click on the “Buy Now” button – this will let you view outstanding invoices and pay by credit card. You can also pay by calling 0800 047 0493 during office hours. We can also accept payments by cheque or BACS. Our bank details are at the bottom of every invoice.

A. Please log in and click “Purchases & History” – this will email a copy invoice to you.

A. No. We can also issue invoices in USD or Euros and you can pay us in these currencies too. Your invoice will show the appropriate bank account details for the currency you’re buying in.

A. We don’t need a PO in order to invoice you. In most circumstances we are happy to arrange credit terms. However, please let us know if we need a PO from you in order to get paid to ensure that your Postcode Anywhere service doesn’t get interrupted.

A. Yes. We can also accept payment by cheque or BACS. If you need credits urgently, please contact us. In most cases, we can usually arrange credit terms.

A. Yes, that’s exactly what it will do. Our sophisticated routing algorithm will take a start and end point, and a number of waypoints, and it will tell you the best order to visit those postcodes in a round trip.

A. If you don’t know the postcode, you can enter the street and town name and pick from a selection of results.

A. The Standard service is ideal for smaller vehicle carriers who need to optimise their fleet. The Premium service is designed for larger haulage companies using HGVs, and takes height, width and weight restrictions into account when planning the route.

A. This is a much-requested feature and is coming soon!

A. Yes, you can run a single route of up to 100 waypoints and one vehicle for a one-off charge of £15 +VAT.

A. We email you the results in a PDF. You’ll receive the list of postcodes in the optimum order and a separate file with the road directions.

A. The route returned will be the quickest journey between the postcodes.

A. Route Optimiser will help make your fleet’s regular journeys more efficient, saving you both time and money. We’re confident we can save you 20% in distance travelled – with a similar reduction in fuel cost and carbon emissions.

A. No. The service is intended to return the best route... and the furthest point on your route will rarely be best. However, if visiting the furthest point first happens to be best for the route, then it will be returned first.

A. Absolutely. Route Optimiser is a multi-vehicle service, so you just need a licence for each vehicle in your fleet and you can optimise your routes among all your vehicles.

A. Royal Mail address data is updated every day. BACS and credit card data is refreshed every month and data for route optimisation, route planning and international address capture is updated every quarter.

A. Our target uptime is 99.999%, including planned maintenance, so an SLA isn’t really necessary. In exceptional circumstances we may agree to offer a Service Level Agreement to larger customers. There is a charge for this service.

A. Since 2006 we have delivered 100% uptime – that includes service upgrades and planned maintenance.

A. Yes, any customer using an on-premise service can hook into the hosted service if you have a problem with your own servers. This is simply a case of changing the IP address that the service point towards.

A. Upgrades are seamless and there is no downtime when they are applied.

A. Store Finder from Postcode Anywhere is paid for on a pay-per-click basis. All pricing options can be viewed on the Store Finder pricing page.

Q. Are distances returned from the service “as the crow flies” or as real-world road-travel distances?

Q. Is the Store Finder service available internationally?

Q. I made a new location list - so why is my store locator still returning results from the old list?

A. Your account details can be restricted to your specific URL. This means that even with code types where your details are visible, they are still safe and secure. Anyone attempting to use them from another site would have their requests rejected and you’d be alerted via email.

A. There are a couple of reasons why coordinates aren't supplied for some addresses. If the address is a PO Box, it does not have coordinates because a PO Box has no physical location. Secondly, the address may be new and therefore may not be included in the dataset. If the address you're using is neither a PO Box nor new, please contact us so we can investigate.

A. Counties are no longer a required part of the address and Royal Mail have not supported them since 1999. This means for areas such as London we do not return a county as part of the address. Don’t panic! You have a number of options if you want to also have a county returned with our service. Simply log in to your account, select “Your details and settings” and click on “Edit these settings” within the UK Counties pane. You can then choose between the following options:

• Default county - (Recommended)
• Former postal county - (as used by the Royal Mail until 1999)
• Administrative county - (this is the strict, government name of the top level administrative body which is either a county or a unitary authority)
• Traditional county - (this is the county name before the reorganisations that started in the 70's)

A. You can top up credit by clicking ‘Buy’ next to the required credit plan on the ‘My Account’ homepage or by selecting ‘Buy Now’ from the left hand side of the same page after you've logged in.

A. Sometimes when you renew your annual licence, a new licence key will be generated, rather than extending the existing licence (typically when the renewal is done at the last minute, or payment is late). To reactivate the service, simply drop in the new key. This will have been emailed to you when you renewed the service. If you are unsure of the key you can view it by logging into your account and selecting ‘Manage Keys’. If you would prefer to have the old key reactivated, please contact us and we'll see if we can help.

A. Yes. From the licence key area when you log in to your account you can choose to reset all the mappings for your look-up. This will make the button appear as ‘Set-up Postcode Anywhere’ and allow you to remap the look-up.

A. Postcode Anywhere provides both premise and street-level address look-ups. Premise level address look-ups will return everything including the house name or number. The street-level option will not return the house name or number. If you are not receiving the house name or number, it may be the case you are either using a street-level licence or using one of our methods which return street-level data.

A. To prevent these alerts you need to make a small amendment to the request you are sending to us. Simply change the start of the request you make from "http://services.postcodeanywhere..." to "https://services.postcodeanywhere...".

A. Yes we do, although we can’t provide unrestricted development accounts under the terms of our agreement with our data providers. However, within reason, we can provide you with free test credit for development purposes - and we also have a free test postcode WR2 6NJ for repetitive testing. If you require a more extended or high volume test environment please contact us to discuss your options.

A. When you pick an address, we normally open a copy of your form in the pop-up window to help copy the address to the main page. We have to do it this way because of the security systems in browsers that stop one website taking content from another. If the main page contains certain types of scripting, it may not open correctly which then stops the address being copied across and the popup being closed. To solve this you need to create a "custom handler" page to transfer the address from our site to your page. Instructions on creating handler pages can be found within the edit wizard of the key.