At a glance
Live count of APC Overnight claims still in an open / pending state, regardless of when they were filed. Includes service-failure refund claims (money-back-on-late on guaranteed services), damage claims, lost-parcel claims, and overcharge disputes. The card is a real-time pulse: the number rises when a new claim is filed and falls when APC pays out, declines, or the merchant withdraws the claim.
| What it counts | COUNT(claims WHERE status IN ('OPEN','PENDING','UNDER_REVIEW','AWAITING_DOCS')). Closed states (PAID, DECLINED, WITHDRAWN, EXPIRED) are excluded. |
| API endpoint | APC’s claims endpoint within the customer-portal API surface. Reads claimReference, consignmentNumber, claimType (service-failure / damage / loss / overcharge), status, filedAt, claimedAmount, lastUpdatedAt. |
| Claim types included | Service-failure refund (NextDay-9am, 10:30, 12 only), damage in transit, loss in transit, RTS-and-charged disputes, overcharge / surcharge disputes (over-weight, residential-uplift). |
| Service level scope | All services pooled. Service-failure claims by definition only apply to guaranteed time-definite tiers; damage and loss claims can be filed against any service. |
| Filing window | Service-failure claims must be filed within 14 days of the failed POD (some account contracts vary, 7 to 30 days). Damage and loss claims must be filed within 28 days of expected delivery. The card does not enforce or alert on filing windows; pair with the open/closed timing fields if needed. |
| Currency | GBP for all UK domestic and Globe export, since APC bills in GBP regardless of destination. Currency rendering follows the merchant’s store currency setting. |
| Aged claims (>7 days) | The alert at >0 unresolved >7d flags any claim that has sat in OPEN status more than 7 days without an APC update. This usually indicates the claim is missing supporting documents (POD, photos of damage, value evidence) or has been queued at APC for review. |
| Returns / RTO | RTS consignments where APC returned the parcel and still charged the merchant produce overcharge claims. Pair with Returned to Sender for the upstream count. |
| Time window | RT (real-time, not period-windowed). Each refresh reads the live state of the claims register. |
| Alert trigger | >0 claims open more than 7 days. The premium UK express benchmark: a healthy account closes claims at ~3 to 5 days median. |
| Roles | owner, operations, finance |
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 B2B auto-parts distributor running NextDay-9am for trade customers, around 1,400 consignments per month. Reading taken at 11:00 GMT on 12 Mar 26 (real-time pulse).| Claim type | Open count | Median age (days) | Total claimed value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Service-failure refund (9am missed) | 17 | 5 | £204.00 |
| Damage in transit | 4 | 11 | £840.00 |
| Loss in transit | 2 | 9 | £620.00 |
| Overcharge / surcharge dispute | 3 | 14 | £138.00 |
| Total open claims | 26 | 6 | £1,802.00 |
>0 unresolved >7d is tripped, 9 of the 26 claims are over 7 days old. Five things to notice:
- Service-failure claims clear quickly when the paperwork is right. APC processes carriage-refund claims on a roughly 5-day turnaround if the POD evidence is auto-attached. The 17 open service-failure claims at 5-day median are healthy in-flight, no action needed unless the same number is still showing 7 days from now.
- Damage claims at 11-day median is the warning. Damage claims need photo evidence, the original packaging, and a statement of value, the supporting-document gather often takes the merchant longer than the APC review. If damage claims are sitting at 11 days median, the bottleneck is internal: someone needs to chase the warehouse for photos. Pair this with the Customer Service playbook.
- Total open claim value is £1,800. That is the cash-recovery pipeline. At a healthy 70 percent payout rate, the merchant should expect ~£1,260 to land in the next 4 to 6 weeks. Pair with Claim Value (open) for the rolling cash-flow view.
- The two loss-in-transit claims at 9 days are highest priority. Loss claims are slower (APC has to confirm the parcel cannot be located across the depot network) and the value per claim is the highest. £620 across two parcels is a £310 average. These also create the worst customer experience: the customer never received the order. Each loss claim has a downstream refund or replacement on the merchant side already.
- Three overcharge claims at 14 days median is APC’s slowest queue. Overcharge claims sit in a finance-team review queue, not the operations queue, and APC’s published SLA on overcharge resolution is 21 working days. Do not chase before then; do escalate to the account team if any individual claim exceeds 30 days. The expected resolution is usually credit on the next invoice rather than cash refund.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
Open claims is a workflow metric, not a performance metric. Pair it with these to act:| Card | Why pair it with Open Claims | What the combination tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Claim Value (open) | The cash-value pipeline. | Open count tells you workload; claim value tells you cash-flow recovery. |
| Late Shipments | Each late premium shipment is a service-failure-refund candidate. | If late count is 30 per week and service-failure-refund claims are 4 per week, the merchant is leaving 25 to 30 carriage refunds per week unfiled. |
| Exception Rate | DAMAGE-REPORT exceptions feed damage claims; CARDED-then-REFUSED-then-RTS sequences feed overcharge disputes. | Spike in DAMAGE-REPORT predicts a 1 to 2 week claim-filing surge. |
| Returned to Sender | RTS consignments where APC charged the merchant are overcharge dispute candidates. | Cross-check RTS volume against open overcharge claims. |
| Failed Deliveries | Failed-and-not-redelivered consignments are loss-claim candidates if the parcel cannot be located. | Persistent FAILED status after 7 to 14 days is the trigger to file. |
Cross-connector: shopify.refund_rate | Downstream side. Open claims on APC are upstream of customer-side refunds and replacements. | If a customer receives a damaged parcel, the merchant typically refunds the customer first, files the APC claim second. |
Cross-connector: stripe.dispute_count | Severe downstream signal. A loss-in-transit claim on APC often produces a chargeback dispute on Stripe 3 to 6 weeks later. | Monitor for the lagged correlation. |
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in APC’s own portal: APC Overnight Customer Portal → Claims → Claim Register. Filter Status = Open + Pending + Awaiting Documents. The aggregate count at the top of the filtered view should reconcile with this card. For account-managed customers, the APC account team’s monthly claims report carries the same figure broken down by claim type, age bucket, and resolution status. Why our number may legitimately differ from APC’s portal:| Reason | Direction | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Status taxonomy mapping | Either | APC’s portal exposes 6 to 8 status states (Open, Pending, Awaiting Documents, Under Review, Approved, Paid, Declined, Withdrawn). Vortex IQ pools the first four into “open”; APC’s portal sometimes splits them. Reconcile by toggling all open-states on the portal filter. |
| Webhook lag | Ours stale | Claim-status changes are pulled rather than pushed; the card refreshes every 15 minutes, so a claim closed in the last 15 minutes still shows open here. |
| Withdrawn vs declined | Either | A merchant-withdrawn claim sometimes shows in the portal as “closed” but counts toward APC’s denial-rate metric. Vortex IQ classifies withdrawn as closed regardless. |
| Age computation | Boundary days off | The “open >7 days” alert measures now() - filedAt in UK local time. The portal sometimes uses lastUpdatedAt, which can reset on every internal status change. |
| Bulk-imported pre-existing claims | Spike on initial connect | When a merchant first connects APC, their existing open-claims register is fully imported. Expect a one-time spike on day 1. |
apc_open_claims = apc_claim_value numerator denominator pair. Open count is the number of claims; claim-value is the GBP sum across the same set. They move together; if claim count rises but claim value is flat, the new claims are low-value (small carriage refunds rather than damage / loss).
Cross-connector reconciliation:
| Card | Expected relationship | Causes of legitimate divergence |
|---|---|---|
stripe.dispute_count | Lagged downstream. Loss-in-transit claims on APC often surface as Stripe disputes 3 to 6 weeks later. | Customer-side recovery (refund or replacement) usually precludes the Stripe dispute; the lagged signal only fires for the merchant-disputed cases. |
shopify.refund_rate | Same-day downstream. Damaged or lost parcels usually drive a customer-side refund the same day. | Refund rate has many drivers; APC claims are one input. |
Documentation cross-reference (for agencies running multiple UK shippers). Open-claims metrics exist with conceptually similar definitions across other UK carriers and 3PLs.
Known limitations / merchant FAQs
My open-claims count keeps growing, what do I do? Two distinct problems. (1) Filing rate is matching late-shipment rate too closely, this is healthy if claims are also closing at a similar rate (5-day median). Watch the closure side, not the filing side. (2) Claims are filing but not closing, that is a documentation problem. APC closes service-failure claims fast when the POD evidence is auto-attached; damage and loss claims need the merchant to upload supporting documents. If open count is growing while late count is flat, the bottleneck is internal documentation, not APC. Why was my service-failure refund declined? Five common reasons in order of frequency. (1) Outside the 14-day filing window, late filing is the single biggest decline reason. Set a process to file within 7 days of the failed POD. (2) Failure cause is recipient-side, APC declines claims where the failure was access-denied, refused, or wrong-address. (3) Service was non-guaranteed, NextDay anytime and Pallet services have no time guarantee. (4) Force majeure declared, rare but APC declares occasional weather or industrial-action exclusions. (5) POD evidence missing or contradicting, sometimes the depot recorded the parcel as “delivered on time” but the customer says otherwise; APC sides with their POD. Should I file a claim for every late premium shipment? Operationally yes, financially close to yes. Filing cost is low (the APC portal supports CSV bulk-upload of claim references) and the success rate on guaranteed-service claims with proper paperwork is 70 to 85 percent. The exception: if the merchant is under-utilising their contracted volume and APC is willing to credit the service-credit pool informally, the relationship is sometimes worth more than the individual claim. Discuss with the account manager. How does this interact with my parcel-insurance policy? Most merchants carry a third-party parcel-insurance policy (Marsh, Aviva, etc.) on top of APC’s £50-per-parcel default carrier liability. The APC claim and the insurance claim are sequential: file the APC claim first, the insurance picks up the gap if APC’s payout is below the parcel value. Some policies require the APC claim to be closed before they will pay; check policy wording. Why does APC charge me on a parcel that was returned to sender? APC’s RTS service is a paid uplift in some account contracts and free in others. Read the contract. If your account is supposed to include free RTS but APC is charging, file an overcharge dispute claim. The dispute resolution typically lands as an invoice credit rather than cash. My open-claims count went from 12 to 47 overnight, what happened? Either (a) a single damaging incident (depot fire, vehicle accident, theft) produced a batch of damage / loss claims at once, or (b) a back-office filing run cleared a backlog of un-filed claims. Check theclaimType and filedAt fields. A spike of 35 same-day same-type claims is event-driven; a spike of 35 mixed-type claims with filedAt ranging across 30 days is a backlog clear-out. Both are normal, neither needs alarm, but both warrant a paragraph in the next ops review.
Why is the alert triggering at >0 claims when I have only one open claim?
The alert is >0 unresolved >7d, not >0 open. The card is calling out that one specific claim has been open without an APC update for more than 7 days. That single claim is the action item, click into the card detail to see which claim and what document or follow-up is missing.