Management and Oversight of Non-Revenue Transactions
Background
The U.S. Postal Service processed 1.1 billion transactions across 31,000 retail locations in fiscal year (FY) 2025. Nearly half of these transactions were “non-revenue,” such as package pickup or change of address, that required staff time but no customer payment. Non-revenue transactions grew by 11 percent over the last five years, compared to a 33 percent drop in revenue transactions. Effectively managing these transactions — which are important to customers and accounted for over $276 million in staff-related costs in FY 2025 — is increasingly important.
What We Did
Our objective was to assess the effectiveness of the Postal Service's management and oversight of non-revenue transactions. We analyzed data; interviewed officials; and reviewed related policies, procedures, and leading best practices.
What We Found
The Postal Service’s management of non-revenue transactions was limited due to data gaps and a lack of timeliness targets, which hindered the oversight of staff performance, efficient resource allocation, and fraud detection. Specifically, we identified transactions exceeding expected timeframes, anomalous activity (such as staff processing unusually high volumes of certain transaction types in a short timeframe), inconsistent transaction totals across reports, and improper categorizations. We estimate $23 million in questioned costs and another $23 million in funds that could be put to better use from April 2025 through March 2027 due to transactions exceeding expected timeframes. We also estimate $15 million in impact associated with over 16 million transactions without timeliness targets to benchmark performance in FY 2025.
The Postal Service also lacks a unified strategy to align local retail operations with the growing non-revenue transaction volume. A comprehensive, data-driven approach would guide efforts to strengthen analyses, implement enhancements, and monitor performance — ultimately positioning the Postal Service to meet changing customer demand for non-revenue transactions more cost-effectively.
Recommendations and Management’s Comments
We made three recommendations to address the issues identified in the report, and Postal Service management disagreed with all three. We will pursue the disagreements through the audit resolution process. Management’s comments and our evaluation are at the end of each finding and recommendation.