At a glance
Mean carriage charge per shipment paid to APC Overnight in the period. Calculated across every consignment with an invoiced charge in the window, including base carriage, fuel surcharge, residential uplift, Saturday uplift, over-weight surcharge, and any zone-extra. Excludes optional add-ons billed outside carriage (insurance, claims-handling fees) and excludes RTS-charged consignments which are surfaced separately.
| What it counts | SUM(consignment_invoiced_amount) / COUNT(consignments_with_invoice) over the rolling 30-day window. Each invoiced consignment contributes one record; multi-parcel consignments count as one. |
| API endpoint | APC’s billing extract endpoint (CSV-feed pull plus the consignment-level chargedAmount field on the tracking detail). Reads the invoiced amount, not the quoted amount. Surcharges that APC adds post-collection (over-weight reclassification, residential uplift) are reflected once they land on the invoice. |
| What is included in the charge | Base carriage, fuel surcharge (variable monthly), residential uplift (£0.85 to £1.50 per parcel typical), Saturday-delivery uplift, AM-cutoff uplift (NextDay-9am, NextDay-10:30, NextDay-12 premiums), zone extra (Highlands, BFPO, Channel Islands), over-weight reclassification (when actual weight > declared). |
| What is excluded | RTS-handling fees, insurance premiums (separate line), claims-handling fees, account-level rebates and volume discounts (those land on the monthly invoice, not the per-consignment line). Card shows pre-rebate gross. |
| Currency | GBP. APC operates in GBP exclusively. Display follows the merchant’s store-currency display setting (FX applied at month-end ECB rate if rendered as USD or EUR). |
| Service mix sensitivity | Strongly sensitive to mix. NextDay-9am is roughly 2.5 to 3.0x the cost of NextDay-12 for the same parcel; a single-week mix shift toward 9am for a B2B replenishment surge moves the headline meaningfully. Pair with Shipments by Service to attribute. |
| Returns / RTO | RTS consignments are excluded from this card; they often produce a separate RTS-handling charge that lands on a different invoice line. |
| Time zone | UK local for the invoice-date stamp. Surcharge re-billings can lag by 7 to 14 days when APC reweighs at depot; a sudden +5 percent jump on the prior month can be back-dated weight reclassifications, not new pricing. |
| Time window | 30D vsP (rolling 30 days vs prior 30 days). The vsP comparison is the action signal; the absolute level is mostly informational. |
| Alert trigger | +10% vsP. A 10 percent month-over-month rise without a service-mix shift is the threshold for an account-team conversation. APC publishes annual rate cards each January / April; a 4 to 6 percent rise in the post-rate-card month is normal. |
| Roles | owner, finance, operations |
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your APC Overnight data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
A UK premium DTC homewares brand running APC Overnight as the time-definite carrier for high-AOV breakable items, around 1,800 consignments per month. Reading taken at 09:00 GMT on 12 Mar 26 for the trailing 30 days (10 Feb 26 to 11 Mar 26), comparison vs the prior 30 days (11 Jan 26 to 09 Feb 26).| Service mix component | Consignments | Avg charge | Total spend |
|---|---|---|---|
| NextDay-12 (base £8.40 + £0.80 fuel) | 1,640 | £9.20 | £15,088 |
| NextDay anytime (base £6.10 + £0.75 fuel) | 124 | £6.85 | £849 |
| Pallet 24 (base £38 + £4.50 fuel) | 32 | £42.50 | £1,360 |
| All APC (this card) | 1,796 | £9.85 | £17,297 |
+10% vsP is not tripped. Five things to notice:
- The 5.2 percent rise breaks down to roughly 3 points fuel-surcharge revision and 2 points service-mix shift. APC re-published its monthly fuel surcharge on 01 Feb 26 (UK diesel pump price drives the formula); that accounts for roughly 3 points across the whole book. The remaining 2 points is a slight shift toward NextDay-12 from NextDay anytime as the brand has been promoting “by 12 noon” delivery on the PDP. Neither component is a pricing problem, both are explainable.
- The 1,640 NextDay-12 average of £9.20 is the dial. That is the unit cost of the brand’s customer promise. If it climbs above £10, the merchant should re-look at (a) the proportion of residential uplifts (charge £1.20 per parcel on B2C addresses), (b) over-weight reclassifications, and (c) zone-extras for non-mainland UK orders.
- Pallet 24 at £42.50 is the right benchmark for that lane. Pallet pricing is roughly £38 to £55 base depending on weight band and contracted rate; £42.50 is mid-band. Pallet shipments are 1.8 percent of consignments but 7.9 percent of total APC spend, which is normal for a brand that ships occasional wholesale orders.
- The vsP comparison is the actionable signal. A merchant who reads “£9.85 average” without a comparison has no action; “£9.85 up 5.2 percent” tells them to check fuel surcharge and mix. If the move had been +12 percent, the next conversation is with the APC account team.
- Compare against Royal Mail and DPD legs. The same merchant’s Royal Mail Tracked 48 leg likely runs at £3.40 to £3.80 per parcel; their DPD Predict NextDay leg around £6.50 to £7.50. APC’s £9.85 is the most expensive leg and is paid for the time-definite cutoff. Use
royal_mail.roy_avg_shipping_costanddpd.dpd_avg_shipping_costfor the side-by-side.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
Avg shipping cost is one of three pillars of the carrier-economics view. Pair it with these:| Card | Why pair it with Avg Shipping Cost | What the combination tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Cost Per Shipment Trend | The 90-day sparkline behind the 30-day average. | If the average jumps but the trend is flat, the move is mix-driven; if both rise, it is pricing or surcharges. |
| Cost by Zone | Where the spend is going geographically. Highlands, BFPO, Channel Islands carry zone uplifts that materially shift the average. | A 10 percent rise in Highlands volume can move the headline by 1 to 2 percent. |
| High-Cost Shipment Outliers | Top 1 percent of charges, often weight-reclassification or oversize-uplift cases. | A handful of outliers can drag the mean up by 0.5 percent without any underlying rate change. |
| Shipments by Service | Service-mix breakdown. NextDay-9am is 2.5x the cost of NextDay-12. | Mix shifts often explain rises that look like price changes. |
| On-Time Delivery Rate | The other half of the carrier-value equation. Cost without OTD context is meaningless. | A merchant paying £9.85 / parcel and getting 96 percent OTD has a different conversation from one paying £8.50 and getting 91 percent. |
Cross-connector: royal_mail.roy_avg_shipping_cost | Cost peer for the Royal Mail leg of a multi-carrier book. | Direct comparison of unit cost across the two main UK carriers in a brand’s portfolio. |
Cross-connector: shopify.aov | Top-line denominator. Shipping cost as a fraction of AOV is the merchant’s true cost-of-fulfilment ratio. | An £18 AOV with £9.85 shipping is unsustainable; £180 AOV with £9.85 shipping is fine. |
Cross-connector: shopify.gross_margin | Margin pressure. Shipping cost rises hit gross margin directly when not passed through to the customer. | A 5 percent rise in this card translates to roughly 0.5 to 1.0 point gross-margin compression depending on AOV. |
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in APC’s own portal: APC Overnight Customer Portal → Billing → Invoice Register. Pull the most recent invoice CSV (typically weekly), divide total invoiced by total consignments. The result should reconcile with this card to within 1 percent. For account-managed customers, APC’s QBR slides the same figure broken down by service, by zone, and by surcharge component. Why our number may legitimately differ from APC’s invoice total:| Reason | Direction | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Rebate timing | Ours higher | Volume rebates and contract discounts land as a single credit on the monthly invoice rather than per-consignment. The card shows pre-rebate gross. To reconcile to net cost, subtract the rebate line from the monthly invoice total before dividing. |
| Surcharge re-billing lag | Ours lower for “today” | APC reweighs and reclassifies parcels at depot; surcharges that land 7 to 14 days after collection are reflected once invoiced. The current 30-day window will under-state cost slightly until the most recent week’s surcharges land. |
| Multi-parcel consignments | Either | A multi-parcel consignment is a single record on this card but multiple parcel lines on APC’s portal parcel-detail view. Reconcile against the consignment-level invoice export, not parcel-level. |
| RTS handling charge | Ours lower | RTS-handling fees are excluded; APC’s invoice register includes them. If the merchant has heavy RTS volume, expect a 0.5 to 2 percent gap. |
| Insurance and add-on lines | Ours lower | Optional insurance, claims handling, and Saturday-collection charges are billed separately. Card shows base carriage cost only. |
| VAT | Either | This card shows ex-VAT (carriage is normally zero-rated for B2B accounts but standard-rated 20 percent for some B2C use cases). APC’s invoice may include VAT. Reconcile on the ex-VAT line. |
apc_avg_shipping_cost × apc_shipments_total ≈ total monthly carriage spend. The card’s avg multiplied by total shipment count should match the monthly invoice ex-VAT, ex-rebate, ex-RTS, ex-insurance.
Cross-connector reconciliation:
| Card | Expected relationship | Causes of legitimate divergence |
|---|---|---|
shopify.shipping_revenue | Customer-side. Shipping revenue collected at checkout vs APC carriage cost paid. The gap is the merchant’s shipping subsidy or surplus. | Free-shipping promotions, multi-carrier books where Shopify revenue is split across carriers. |
shopify.gross_margin | Indirect downstream. Carrier cost rises compress gross margin when not passed through. | Many drivers of gross margin; carrier cost is one input. |
Documentation cross-reference (for agencies running multiple UK shippers). Avg-shipping-cost metrics exist with conceptually similar definitions across other UK carriers and 3PLs. Note that absolute numbers are not directly comparable across carriers because of different service mixes and different pricing structures.