The holidays are fast approaching. Soon you’ll be celebrating the season and sending holiday gift baskets and cards to people you have enjoyed working with this year. So here at Service Objects, we’ve teamed up with none other than Santa Claus himself, with a great gift for you! A free web-based portal where Santa will help you verify addresses online, powered by our Address Validation capabilities.

It’s ready to use right now.

If you have never used online address validation before – or even if you have, and want a quick, fun way to check a few addresses – Santa is here to help. Take a look:

Use this form to give him a delivery address – anywhere in the world where reindeer fly, business or personal – and then he and his helpers will be right back with one of the following results:

Finally, a little bit of fine print. You will be allowed to look up a maximum of 10 addresses using this tool. This screen will allow you to look up one address at a time, including business names where needed, but bear in mind that we offer convenient API and list-processing versions of these tools as well. If you need to look up more addresses, no worries – a convenient link will lead you to learn more about our full-feature capabilities, as well as additional information about our phone and email validation capabilities.

We’re hoping that once you get a taste of some holiday address verification – and find out how simple it is to implement for your business – you’ll want to have these capabilities for yourself, all year round. (In fact, Santa confided to us that he and Mrs. Claus will keep using Service Objects tools to improve his own delivery accuracy every Christmas from here, because sometimes even reindeer are no match for automated shipping.) Want to learn more? Talk to our friendly technical experts, and we’ll make it a happy holiday season for you too!

Service Objects has been returning location-based tax rates in the DOTS FastTax API since 2001. Back then, we identified sales tax rates using only zip code. Since zip codes could cross multiple city and county borders, we were returning the rate most likely to be accurate based on preferred city and county. That evolved to returning multiple results based on a zip code, with each result containing a unique city, county and state. This was more accurate, but still involved a level of human intervention as multiple rates could be returned.

The service improved further as Service Objects developed its DOTS Address Validation services, which allowed us to get even more precise in determining the right area for the tax rates. Users could now submit a full address to the API and in most cases get a single accurate result, pinpointing the result to a location that had a clear tax rate.

However, if a given address was bad – or maybe even good but too messy to validate – it would not return a result and users would need to failover to the zip code level operations. Rural addresses which fall outside of city boundaries could wreak havoc if the proper location is not identified.

Last year, Service Objects introduced a new operation, GetBestMatch, to solve these challenges.

GetBestMatch in FastTax is designed to find the best rate possible and return a clean result. It uses the latest algorithms from Address Validation – US to clean and validate the toughest addresses and failing that, validates that the other data points are valid in order to return a zip level rate.

The service can also return an address level rate through the analysis of the nearby area, even if the address is bad. If an area can be proven to have a consistent rate for a zip, city or county and we know the address would be within one of those areas with 100% certainty, it can be deduced that since any address within that area has the same rate, the rate we return would be accurate at the address level. This extra analysis means that GetBestMatch can more precisely return accurate rates more often than its predecessor operations.

Additional Returns Offer More Insight

To add even more accuracy to the service, GetBestMatch also does boundary analysis to ensure the most accurate location is used in the tax calculations. The main piece of information returned to users here is the “IsUnincorporated” note. IsUnincorporated helps users identify locations that might be considered part of the city but actually are not. This example shows what that might look like:

823 Holiday Dam Rd, Honea Path, SC, 29654

This is a partial return of the operation including the Note IsUnincorporated. This notifies the user that the CityRate, if it exists, should not be used in the final TaxRate. We have decided not to modify the original found result (TaxRate and CityRate) but return the IsUnincorporated result so that the user can handle it however they wish. In an upcoming release we will be adding a new return “UnincorporatedTaxRate” to simplify all of this.

The improved rates of return for address level checks also come with a few new challenges. Since we can return accurate rates even if the address is extremely messy, there might be times when we do not always have an accurate city or county to return. We know the rate is accurate but not necessarily exactly where the location is located. For example:

11900 Hunting, Pickerington, OH, 34147

This is a bad address. However, through extra validation we know the other parts of the address are good. We know the zip code and county are good, but it’s possible for multiple cities to fall within these boundaries. Analysis shows the rates would be the same regardless so while we are not able to accurately tell what city is attached to the address, we still know every address in the potential area would have the same rate, so we can confidently say the rate would be good for the address. Another example shows an even more obvious reason why we might not have a value:

8538 Smith Street, Wales, MI, 48027

Again, the address is bad, but this one is easy. Michigan only has a state rate, which means that all addresses within Michigan will have the same state rate. The analysis of city, county and zip shows a consistent city and zip, but the county could be multiple results. So, we can display city and zip code but not county. FastTax is not intended to be an address validation service, but a helpful tip is to look at the Zip return. If the Zip is 5 digits, it meant something happened during validation and the address did not pass inspection.

The latest GetBestMatch updates also added support for the US Territories (Guam, Micronesia, American Samoa etc.) Here is an abbreviated example of an address in Guam:

Bldg 30 Farenholt, Tutahan, 96910

In addition, we already supported military locations within the United States, but now there is support for all of the remote bases around the world as well. An abbreviated example of that can be seen here:

Unit 28103, USAG Graf Chaplain, APO, AE, 09002

Since all of these locations, even the ones abroad, had US assigned postal codes; making sure we could return results was of utmost importance. We now have a complete list of results covering all areas associated with the United States.

Finally, the latest operation also now supports JSON responses as one of our last services to be converted. This operation was also created to be more dynamic, information components outputs allow us to add new results on the fly without breaking any client integrations, like those using SOAP. Fields such as CountyFIPs have already been added, and the new field UnincorporatedTaxRate will also be added here. These fields allow us to work with our clients to add custom logic or results that might not otherwise be available.

Is there a custom logic you’d like to see in FastTax? Reach out and let us know, or get your free trial key and start testing today.

Service Objects is committed to fighting fraud and bad data wherever we see it. Through our APIs, best practices when handling sensitive data, or through recommendations on clients’ business logic, we are here to help enhance data quality and eliminate fraud.

A good example of the latter is educating our customers about how to avoid fraud losses. One way is by paying closer attention to orders using freight forwarders – which are legitimate services that are often misused by fraudsters. At the end of this post, you will find a free resource to make this easier: an extensive list of shipping and freight forwarders that you can use to help fight fraud when fulfilling orders.

What is a freight forwarder?

Freight and shipping forwarders arrange for the exporting and importing of goods. These companies often specialize in storage and shipping of goods on behalf of customers. In short, they help arrange for goods to get from point A to point B.

Are all freight forwarders associated with fraud?

Absolutely not! There are many reputable freight forwarders that do great work in coordinating the shipping of goods between consumers and sellers. When fraud is perpetrated, they are co-victims along with the seller. That being said, freight forwarders are often a go-to-tool for duping vendors and sellers into footing the bill for fraudulent purchases.

The typical process may go as follows:

• A customer will place a large order, and ask that the product(s) be shipped through a specific freight forwarder.
• The customer will offer to reimburse the seller for shipping through the freight forwarder – and normally wants the order shipped quickly, before the scam is discovered. (Money is no object for orders like these, because they are usually being placed with stolen or compromised payment methods.)
• Often the fraudster will have set up a legitimate-looking website ahead of time to give the appearance of a legitimate and trustworthy business.
• After the seller ships the goods and they are picked up by the fraudster, the payment for the shipping fee and the products itself usually falls through, leaving the seller to foot the bill for both the freight forwarder’s services and inventory loss.

How do I avoid fraud where freight forwarders are used?

Great question! One of the best and easiest ways to help mitigate this type of fraud as a seller of goods is to pay extra attention to orders using a freight forwarding company’s address. For PO’s like these, it would be smart to build in business logic for some extra vetting to ensure the purchaser’s legitimacy and help prevent fraud from the start.

That is why we are providing a list of all the freight forwarders we could find. We recommend using this list to detect matches between an order’s shipping address and a freight forwarder’s. To do this, run an order’s shipping address through our DOTS Address Validation – US service and use the BarcodeDigits field as a unique identifier for an address. If the BarcodeDigits address matches a freight forwarder’s address, the order should be flagged for some additional vetting to verify its authenticity.

Service Objects is committed to helping our clients avoid fraud however we can, and this list and the business logic is just one strategy that can make a real difference. If you need help setting up our address validation tools, please feel free to contact us, we are always happy to help.

Google Maps is an amazing service. Much of the civilized world has now been mapped through its data sources, ranging from satellite data to its ubiquitous camera-mounted vehicles. The result is a tool that allows you to find a location, link to local businesses, or virtually drive anywhere from downtown Paris to rural Mexico.

However, if you use Google Maps to validate addresses in a business, it is a little like trying to find a lifelong mate for your grandmother on Tinder: it is possible, but with a tool that wasn’t necessarily designed for that purpose. So let’s look at the differences between this service versus professional address validation and geolocation tools.

Google Maps versus address validation

Let’s start with the most important difference: Google Maps is very complete, but sometimes wrong. How wrong? Mistakes can range from bad directions, wrong street names, and bad addresses to wrong country borders, omitting large cities and everything in between. Once, in a mistake Google acknowledged, a Texas construction firm even demolished the wrong house when Google Maps sent them there.

Another difference is where the data comes from in the first place. Google Maps uses a variety of sources including administrative boundaries, parcels, topographic features, points of interest, trails, road features, and address points or ranges. It also accepts data from “authoritative” organizations as well as individuals, subject to a vetting process. As a result, however, it is possible for mistakes to be introduced and/or made when aggregating or consolidating the data.

Finally and perhaps most importantly, Google does not know exactly where every address is. When it does not have rooftop level data to pinpoint the address it will estimate where an address is using techniques such as address interpolation. Sometimes an address may also be wrong because an individual claimed the location and entered the information incorrectly, or changes such as new municipal or postcode boundaries were not updated.

What the pros do

By comparison, professional address validation and geolocation tools don’t guess at results, because their focus is more on accuracy. Tools such as Service Objects’ DOTS Address Validation and Address Geocode capabilities are focused on delivering an accurate and precise response, versus settling for “close enough.”

To get specific, if our address validation tool cannot correct and validate that an address is real, we will fail it and will not guess. By comparison, Google may just use the closest approximation, which can lead to issues. Similar rules apply to geocoding latitude and longitude coordinates from address data: where necessary, Service Objects will move down a gradient of accuracy/precision, but will still often be closer to the correct coordinates than Google.

Another key difference lies in our data sources. For example, DOTS Address Validation uses continually updated USPS, Canada Post and international data in combination with proprietary databases, to create near-perfect match accuracy. Likewise, for Address Geocoding addresses and coordinates are validated against our master database, the US Census Bureau, TIGER®/Line file, USPS® ZIP+4 tables, and other proprietary databases, ultimately yielding a 99.8% match rate accuracy when translating an address to its latitude and longitude coordinates.

Use the right tool

We like Google Maps. Without it we wouldn’t be able to easily visit major world cities online, find a good sushi bar near our hotel, or get directions to visit Aunt Mildred. But when you need professional-grade accuracy in address and location data for your business, be sure to use the right tools. Need more specifics? Contact us for a no-pressure consultation, and our team will be happy to explore your specific needs.

Most people think that they mail or ship things to addresses – and they would be wrong. And the reasons for this might be very important to your bottom line.

First, let’s look at one actual address here in our native Santa Barbara, California: 1540 N. Ontare Road.

 

This address is quite real. (In fact, its property is currently for sale on Realtor.com.) But we wouldn’t recommend shipping a package there – at least not yet – because at the moment it is a vacant 20-acre lot.

Now, let’s look at another address: 350 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY:

 

This is also a valid address: it is the famous Empire State Building, one of the tallest buildings in the United States. We wouldn’t recommend using this address by itself for shipping a package either, because without more detail such as a suite number, there is no way of knowing which of its more than 1000 businesses serves as the destination. (In fact, the address itself isn’t even that important here: this building is large enough to have its own ZIP code, 10118.)

Understanding delivery points

These are both examples of the differences between an address and a delivery point. Addresses simply describe the location of a piece of geography, while delivery points are the lifeblood of physical shipments: they are approved unique locations served by delivery services such as the U.S. Postal Service. Many people think they are shipping to addresses, but they are actually shipping to delivery points.

This underscores the importance of delivery point validation, whether you are doing a direct mail marketing campaign or shipping products to customers. There are several possible points of failure where a delivery point may be invalid or undeliverable:

• The physical address may be incorrect
• The physical address may be correct, but undeliverable (such as our vacant lot example above)
• The physical address alone may be insufficient, such as a multi-tenant building
• Additional delivery point information may be incorrect or invalid: for example, a fourth-floor suite in a three-story building, or a nonexistent suite number
• The delivery point information may be completely correct, but correspond to the wrong recipient

So from here, your new mantra should be: is it deliverable?

Address validation: the key to accurate delivery points

This is where our flagship address validation tools come in. Available for US, Canadian and international markets, these services provide real-time verification of deliverability – including flagging of vacancy, returned mail, and general delivery addresses – to ensure accurate contact data at the time of data entry or use.

These tools instantly verify, correct and append delivery addresses, using APIs that integrate with your CRM or marketing automation platforms, cloud connectors, or convenient batch services for cleaning your databases without the need for programming. Whichever approach you use, you will leverage our vast infrastructure of up-to-the-minute data from the USPS, Canada Post and other sources, along with sophisticated and accurate address verification capabilities.

Our DOTS Address Validation – US 3 service, for example, provides near-perfect match accuracy with updates mirroring the USPS, and sub-second response times that allow you to validate live customer input in real time. And our industry-leading GetBestMatches operation combines Delivery Point Validation (DPV) to verify an address is deliverable, Residential Delivery Indicator (RDI) to identify residential or business, and SuiteLink (SLK) to add secondary suite information for businesses, all with a single API call to our USPS CASS Certified™ engine.

Want to learn more about engineering delivery point validation into your operations? Contact us for friendly, knowledgeable answers from our experienced team of data quality professionals.

Service Objects is pleased to welcome a new service to our lineup, DOTS Address Insight – US.  Built on the core of our USPS CASS Certified DOTS Address Validation – US and DOTS Address Geocode – US services, Address Insight – US blends address and geocode data with supplemental demographic data. Our proprietary datasets of hard to get addresses (like rural or unincorporated areas) enhance United States Postal Service data and provide additional insights about locations that no single service could handle. Address Insight – US uses this data to strengthen your customer profile with just one call.

Address Insight – US Employs Powerful Data from Service Objects’ Strongest Services

Address Validation – US provides robust address validation, correction, and standardization for the vast majority of valid US addresses. Impressive fuzzy matching capabilities and logic are used for dealing with complex address structures. Delivery point validation, residential/business indicators, and suite link to append suite information are all included. In addition, Address Validation – US returns important informational pieces like corrections that were made to the address or identifying special cases such as location vacancy or returning mail.

Address Geocode – US combines multiple datasets to handle complex cases and messy addresses and return the most comprehensive set of Latitude and Longitude coordinates possible. Key informational pieces including State FIPS, County FIPS, Census Tract, and Census Block are also returned. Mapping calculations are performed to identify locations that are unincorporated, or outside of the bounds of a city. These calculations also identify the most accurate name of the location in PlaceName, which could be the name of an area within a larger city – where the larger city would normally be returned.

Three-in-one Service Improves Results and Location Scoring

In addition to the vast datasets found in Address Validation – US and Address Geocode – US, Address Insight – US incorporates additional compiled datasets that improve results and enhances location accuracy scoring. The ability to return information about challenging or hard to find addresses is a critical feature of Address Insight – US. The service returns several notes that help identify information about the address, such as:

• AddressFoundByUSPS indicates that our Address Validation service successfully identified the location. This is the best possible result as it indicates a solid chance of mail delivery and more informational datapoints are available.
• AddressFoundInSupplementalData indicates that the address information was found in one of the supplemental data sets. Its not as high quality as the USPS data and not as many additional data points are available, however there is a high likelihood the location is a good address.
• AddressIsGeneralDelivery indicates that we could not find any specific information on the address, but the area is known and the street is good. The location is likely part of a General Delivery area and still has a strong likelihood of being valid.

Address Insight – US returns a score from 0-100 that approximates the likelihood that the location is a good one.

Additionally, Address Insight – US returns many other useful pieces of demographic and informational data, which can help businesses increase revenue through targeted marketing and satisfy regulatory requirements for compliance in different industries. Sample demographic returns include:

• ZipHouseholdValue tells the average value of houses in the area.
• ZipPersonsPerHousehold tells the size of households in the area.
• HouseholdIncome returns give the average house hold incomes for different levels of the area.
• Other informational returns include area codes associated with the area, time zone, MSA, CBSA, DMA and more.

New Interface Designed for Future Enhancements

One of the best new features available in Address Insight – US is that it is built upon a new dynamic interface that allows us to safely add in new data fields. We will never change a result that already exists, however, this interface allows us the ability to continually improve the service and add in new fields as they become available. This feature will allow Service Objects to potentially work with clients on custom solutions and in the future, we may even be able to build add-ons to the service that may return entirely new datasets.

Address Insight – US provides address validation, geocoding, and demographic data – all with a single call. We support REST, SOAP, GET, and POST requests over HTTPS outputting in XML and JSON formats. Get started with your free trial key for Address Insight – US or visit the developer guide to learn more.

Labor Day is much more than the traditional end of summer in America: it pays tribute to the efforts of working people. It dates back well over a century, with one labor leader in the 1800s describing it as a day to honor those “who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold.” And we aren’t forgetting our friends in Europe and elsewhere, who celebrate workers as well with holidays such as May Day.

As we celebrate work and the labor movement – and enjoy a long holiday weekend – we wanted to take a look at some of the ways that we help you save labor, as you try to carve grandeur from your organization’s data. Here are some of the more important ones:

Validation and more. Let’s start with the big one. For nearly two decades, the main purpose of our existence has been to take the human effort out of cleaning, validating, appending, and rating the quality of your contact and lead data. Whether your needs involve marketing, customer service, compliance or fraud prevention, these tools save labor in two ways: first, by saving you and your organization from re-inventing the wheel or doing manual verification, and second, by saving you from the substantial human costs of bad data.

Ease of integration. What is the single worst data quality solution? The one that gets implemented badly, or not at all. One of the biggest things our customers praise us for is how easy it is to implement our tools, to work almost invisibly in their environment. We offer everything from API integration and web hooks with common platforms, all the way to programming-free batch interfaces for smaller or simpler environments – backed by clear documentation, free trial licenses and expert support.

Speed and reliability. As one customer put it, “milliseconds matter” – particularly in real-time applications where, for example, you are validating customer contact data as they are in the process of entering it. Our APIs are built for speed and reliability, with a longstanding 99.999% uptime and multiple failover servers, as well as sub-second response times for many services – so you don’t waste time tearing your hair out or troubleshooting responsiveness issues.

Better analytics. Your contact data is a business asset – put it to work as a tool to gain business insight for faster, more informed decision-making and market targeting. You can target leads by demographics or geocoding, enhance your leads with missing phone or contact information, or leverage your customer base for better decision support, among many other applications.

Customer support. We recently interviewed a major longtime customer about using our products, and when we asked them about support they gave us the highest compliment of all: “We never need to call you!” But those who do call know that our best-in-class support, staffed by caring, knowledgeable experts who are available 24/7/365, represents a large savings of time and effort for our clients.

We hope you enjoy this Labor Day holiday. And when you get back, contact one of our product experts for a friendly, pressure-free discussion about how we can create less labor for you and your organization!

 

The golden rule of marketing has always been, “know your customer.” In today’s regulatory environment, however, it might be more accurate to say, “know your customer – or else!” Nowadays customer data – particularly in areas such as geocoding and demographic data – are often central to maintaining compliance with a wide range of regulations, in the financial world and elsewhere.

In response to this, Service Objects has just released a powerful new capability to help automate the gathering and analysis of geolocated consumer data: Address Insight – US. It provides address standardization, address geocoding and demographic information together in one real-time service, and is designed to serve a wide range of applications ranging from compliance to targeted marketing.

Examples of financial compliance issues

Let’s look at some of the areas where address insight can benefit your compliance efforts:

• The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) requires federally insured lending institutions to provide lending opportunities to low-to-moderate income communities – and in particular, prove that they are not “redlining” specific neighborhoods and denying them credit. One of the key performance criteria for evaluating CRA compliance is your geographic distribution of loans.
• The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA), enacted by Congress in 1975, requires lenders to publicly disclose data regarding their mortgage lending activities. While this is a disclosure law with no implied quotas, HMDA also serves to ensure that lenders do not contribute to the decline of specific geographic areas by failing to provide adequate mortgage financing.
• For consumer lending in general, the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) has a set of Fair Lending Examination Procedures used to audit lenders for evidence of lending discrimination. These reviews include an analysis of geographic patterns in lending to seek evidence of “redlining” or neighborhood-based discrimination.
• Conversely, certain real estate transactions may be subject to Geographic Targeting Orders (GTO), which are enhanced identification and record-keeping requirements imposed by the Federal Financial Crimes Enforcement Network for expensive real estate transactions in areas that are prone to money laundering activities. For example, as of 2017 transactions of $3 million or more in Manhattan or $1 million or more in parts of Florida were subject to GTOs, along with numerous other metropolitan areas.

A solution for compliance and beyond

Of course, there are numerous applications beyond compliance for geocoded address insight. For example, academic researchers can use address insight to study specific neighborhoods – for example, the University of Chicago divides the city of Chicago into 75 defined communities that correlate with tract information, and can be used as study variables. And of course, the combination of location insight and demographic data can be a very powerful tool for market targeting.

For compliance applications, Service Objects’ Address Insight – US provides data such as MSA code, state code, county code (FIPS), and tract number for addresses for FFIEC compliance. It also includes all the benefits of Service Objects’ flagship address validation and standardization capabilities, as well as appended demographic information such as household values and incomes by ZIP code.

As with all Service Objects services, Address Insight – US is available through APIs that can be interfaced directly to most contact data automation platforms, as well as convenient batch list processing for smaller applications or specific datasets. Contact us for a free 500-transaction trial key, and see what this new tool can do for you!

The country of Australia, officially known as the Commonwealth of Australia, consists of six states and two territories. There are over 13 million known deliverable addresses in Australia. This article breaks down the standard format used for Australian addresses, and what to check for in each field of these addresses.

Postal Services

Mail in Australia is handled by Australia Post, formally known as the Australian Postal Corporation. Australia Post is a government-owned corporation that was founded in 1809.

International Country Code

First, let’s look at how Australia defines its country codes, as well as its states and territories. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) published the ISO 3166 standard, officially known as Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions.

The ISO 3166 standard consists of three parts:

Part	ISO	Description
1	ISO 3166-1	Country Codes – defines codes for the names of countries, dependent territories, and special areas of geographical interest.
2	ISO 3166-2	Country subdivision code – defines codes for the names of primary subdivisions of a country, such as a state or a province.
3	ISO 3166-3	Code for formerly used names of countries – defines codes for country names that have been removed from ISO 3166-1.

ISO 3166-1, which defines country codes, contains three sets of country codes:

ISO Country Codes	Description
ISO 3166-1 alpha-2:	Defines a country as a two-letter country code, commonly referred to as the ISO, ISO2, or ISO-2.
ISO 3166-1 alpha-3:	Defines a country as a three-letter country code, commonly referred to as ISO3, or ISO-3.
ISO 3166-1 numeric	Defines a country as a three-digit country code.

ISO 3166-1 Country Codes – Australia

Country Code Type	Country Code
ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code	AU
ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 code	AUS
ISO 3166-1 numeric code	36

ISO 3166-2 Codes

The ISO currently lists codes for Australia’s six states and two of its territories.

ISO 3166-2 code	Subdivision Name	Subdivision category
AU-NSW	New South Wales	State
AU-QLD	Queensland	State
AU-SA	South Australia	State
AU-TAS	Tasmania	State
AU-VIC	Victoria	State
AU-WA	Western Australia	State
AU-ACT	Australian Capital Territory	Territory
AU-NT	Northern Territory	Territory

Address Format

Now, let’s look at how delivery addresses are constructed. The address format for deliverable mail in Australia is defined by Australia Post, where an address is made up of several components.

Position	Address Component	Description	Format	Requirement	Example
First line	Recipient	The name of the person, company or organization.	Use common abbreviations in titles and distinctions. Also,avoid unnecessary punctuation.	Required	Issac Nichols
Second line and third line if necessary	Reference Details	When necessary, the name of the person’s job/position and/orthe name of the company, organization or department.		Optional	Postmaster Australia Post
Second to last line	Thoroughfare	The street address, Box number or Locked Bag number. If athoroughfare is not available, then include thebuilding/complex name in its place. Include building subunitand floor/level when necessary.	Use common abbreviations where applicable. Also, no punctuationallowed.	Required	111 Bourke St
Last line, first component	Locality or Delivery office	The full name of the city, suburb, placename or Post Office-Delivery Centre (DC) or a Business Centre (BC). Note that thedelivery locality may not necessarily be the same as thegeographic locality.	Must be in UPPER CASE. Also, no punctuation allowed.	Required	MELBOURNE
Last line, second component	State or Territory	The abbreviated format of the state or territory.	The abbreviation of the state or territory and not the fullname. Also, no punctuation allowed.	Required	VIC
Last line, third component	Postcode	A four-digit numeric code used to identify the postal deliveryarea.	Do not omit leading zeros. Also, no punctuation allowed.	Required	300

States

Name	Abbreviation	Postcode Ranges
New South Wales	NSW	1000—1999 * 2000—2599 2619—2899 2921—2999
Queensland	QLD	4000—4999 9000—9999 *
South Australia	SA	5000—5799 5800—5999 *
Tasmania	TAS	7000—7799 7800—7999 *
Victoria	VIC	3000—3999 8000—8999 *
Western Australia	WA	6000—6797 6800—6999 *

* Reserved for PO Boxes and Large Volume Receivers (LVR)

Territories

Name	Abbreviation	Postcode Ranges
Australian Capital Territory	ACT	0200—0299* 2600—2618 2900—2920
Northern Territory	NT	0800—0899 0900—0999*

* Reserved for PO Boxes and Large Volume Receivers (LVR)

External Territories

Australia has three inhabited external territories. They do not use their own name and abbreviation in Australia Post’s postcode system and are instead assigned the name of another state.

Name	Abbreviation	Postcode
Norfolk Island	NSW	2899
Christmas Island	WA	6798
Cocos (keeling) Island	WA	6799

Postcodes

Australian postcodes are four-digit codes that are used to help sort and route mail. The first two digits often represent which state or territory the postcode belongs too, with the exception of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) which is embedded in New South Wales (NSW).

The postcode is the third and final address component in the last address line, following the Locality and State/Territory components. However, if the envelope being used includes four postcode squares in the bottom right corner then Australia Post prefers that you fill those boxes in with the postcode instead.

Postcode vs Geography

Some postcodes may cover two or more states or territories. For example, the postcode 0872 is currently used to cover 87 localities located in West Australia (WA), South Australia (SA) and Northern Territory (NT). Australia Post sometimes finds it easier to send mail through a post office located in one state/territory for an address geographically located in another state/territory. So, it is not uncommon to find an address with a mailing address that does not match its physical address or geographic location.

Postcodes do not always correspond to a geographic location. Many postcodes are reserved for post office (PO) boxes and some are reserved for large organizations. Some large companies, government agencies, and organizations are classified as Large Volume Receivers (LVR) and will have their own unique postcode. For example, the postcode 0200 corresponds to the Australian National University

Address Validation International: Overcoming Cultural Idiosyncrasies and Postal Format Variables

The above content provides a general overview of Australia and the address format specified by Australia Post. Overall, there are more than 18 different address components, elements and fragments to consider when working with Australian addresses. There are also monthly data updates published by Australia Post to stay on top of.

As with most countries, Service Objects’ Address Validation International (AVI) is capable of processing and validating deliverable addresses in Australia. By understanding this country’s very structured address format, including specific idiosyncrasies such as required upper-case municipality addresses, state and territory abbreviations, and four-digit postal codes, you can automate much of the process of ensuring your contact data quality for this important international market.