Q. I sent my registration renewal in by mail and got it back with a slip showing that I filled the check out for too much money. It was only 50 cents more. Couldn’t the DMV keep it or just send back a check for the overage? Now I have to wait and I may not get my registration on time!

A. Did you know that there are over 1 million motor vehicles registered in the State of Rhode Island, with renewal times staggered over the entire year? The DMV provides customers with four options for registration renewals: online with a credit or debit card, by mail, at one of our DMV branch drop-boxes, or at any one of the nine AAA branches located throughout the state, provided you are a AAA member.

But if you choose the mail or drop box option, you must be very diligent about filling out your registration form. If you have a preprinted form that you received in the mail, check it very carefully. Yes, we realize the print is small, but in the next couple of months customers will be able to see the price more clearly, because we’ve asked our printer to increase the font size for that information. So the first suggestion for a smooth and timely renewal — make certain you have filled out your check or money order for the correct amount. The check or money order must be exact. Also, you may pay for multiple registrations with one check, but please, check the addition to make sure you are sending in the correct total amount.

The second most common error we see is that people neglect to fill out their insurance information. Insurance is mandatory in Rhode Island. The box provided for the information is marked ‘Mandatory’ in red ink, so it will be more visible. But if you don’t fill it in, by law, we cannot process your registration, and so it gets mailed back so that it can be completed.

Third is property tax. If you are delinquent in paying your property tax, by state law we must block your registration. Every November, all 39 cities and towns send the DMV a list of those taxpayers that the assessor’s office has deemed delinquent. If you get your preprinted renewal in the mail and it is stamped “Unpaid Taxes” at the top, then you must pay your motor vehicle property tax to your local tax assessor. The tax assessor’s office will then stamp your renewal form “Registration Approved”. If we don’t see that stamp, once again, back it goes.

And last — you must sign the form in the box provided. By signing the form you attest that all the information contained on the form is correct and that you are aware of Rhode Island’s Mandatory Insurance law.

Most mailed renewals get processed by a bank through what we call a “lock-box” arrangement. The bank processes the payments and sends a list of paid renewals to our computer room nightly for a batch to be run and mailed out the next day with decals. But the bank cannot process any registration if any one of those four items mentioned above is missing. The renewal then kicks out as an error, and a DMV clerk must go through all the returns from the bank manually and send the forms and check back to the customer, along with a notice showing what was omitted. This causes delays in processing and getting your renewal out to you. Multiply that by hundreds of thousands of renewals all year long, and that’s a lot of time lost to delays and manual processing. If everyone checked for errors carefully before sending in their paperwork, the process would move along much more efficiently.

Gina Antonucci Zanni, supervisor of communications for the State Division of Motor Vehicles, has agreed to answer questions of general interest posed by Journal readers about state motor vehicle laws and procedures. To ask a question that would also be of interest to other readers, send a letter to Ask projoCars, Features Department, The Providence Journal, 75 Fountain St., Providence, RI, 02902. You can e-mail your question to projocars@projo.com. Please put “Ask projoCars” in the subject field. Questions or complaints of a specific nature should be posed to the DMV directly and will not be answered in this column.