At a glance
Share of Australia Post Express Post consignments addressed inside the Next Business Day Network that were delivered on or before the next business day after lodgement. Australia Post publishes a delivery guarantee for Express Post between eligible postcodes: a miss makes the consignment eligible for an automatic postage refund. This card is your contractual performance score against that guarantee, and the early-warning gauge for refund exposure.
| What it tracks | COUNT(express_eligible WHERE delivered_at <= next_business_day(lodged_at)) / COUNT(express_eligible WHERE delivered_at IS NOT NULL) over the rolling 30-day window. Each delivered eligible consignment scores 0 or 1 against its own next-business-day target. |
| Data source | Express Post consignments from the Australia Post Shipping & Tracking API. Reads the article ID, product code, lodgement scan timestamp, and the delivered scan from the tracking-events feed. The target date is the next business day after the lodgement scan, skipping weekends and the relevant state public holidays. |
| Service scope | Express Post, eligible postcodes only. Express parcels addressed outside the Next Business Day Network are excluded from the denominator (they carry no guarantee); their eligibility is on Express Post Address-Eligibility Rate. Parcel Post and Standard are out of scope. |
| Business-day calendar | The target uses Australia Post business days. State public holidays differ (for example Melbourne Cup Day in VIC); the card applies the destination state’s holiday calendar, so a parcel into VIC on Cup Day is not counted late. |
| Return-leg inclusion | Outbound only. Australia Post Returns consignments are tagged inbound and filtered out. |
| Time window | 30D vsP (rolling 30 days, period over period). Daily readings are noisy below roughly 150 Express consignments per day. |
| Alert trigger | <95% (refund-clause exposure). Below 95 percent the volume of guarantee misses is large enough that unclaimed postage refunds become a measurable leak. |
| Roles | owner, operations |
Calculation
For every Express Post consignment whose from/to postcode pair is inside the Next Business Day Network, the card computes a target delivery date: the next Australia Post business day after the lodgement scan. It then compares the delivered scan against that target. On or before target scores as on time; after target, or no delivered scan once the target has passed, scores as a miss. Three things shape the reading:- Lodgement, not label print, starts the clock. Australia Post’s guarantee runs from when the parcel enters the network (the lodgement / first acceptance scan), not from when you printed the label in your warehouse. A parcel that sits on the despatch bench for a day before lodgement does not consume guarantee time; that gap is a fulfilment issue, visible on Orders with Carrier Dispatch SLA Missed.
- Business days, with state holidays. The next-business-day target skips weekends and the destination state’s public holidays. This is why the card and a naive “delivered within 24 hours” calculation disagree around long weekends.
- Eligibility is the gate. Only network-eligible consignments are scored. A drop on Express Post Address-Eligibility Rate changes which parcels are in this denominator, so always read the two cards together.
Worked example
The same Australian DTC supplements brand, fulfilling from Mascot, NSW (2020), sending around 2,300 Express Post consignments in the trailing 30 days. Reading taken at 09:00 AEST on 14 Apr 26 for the window 16 Mar 26 to 14 Apr 26. Eligible consignments only.| Destination lane | Express consignments | Delivered by next business day | OTD |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sydney metro (intra-state) | 940 | 926 | 98.5% |
| Melbourne metro | 610 | 587 | 96.2% |
| Brisbane / SE QLD metro | 430 | 410 | 95.3% |
| Adelaide metro | 180 | 168 | 93.3% |
| Perth metro | 140 | 118 | 84.3% |
| All eligible Express (this card) | 2,300 | 2,209 | 96.0% |
<95% is not tripped at the aggregate. Five things to notice:
- The aggregate hides a Perth problem. Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane are comfortably above the floor. Perth at 84.3 percent is the lane dragging the tail. The 22 missed Perth consignments are each refund-eligible. Pair with OTD by Route to confirm the concentration before you escalate.
- Every miss is money you can claim back. 91 missed consignments at an Express Post postage of roughly AUD 11 to AUD 16 each is AUD 1,000 to AUD 1,450 of refundable postage this month, if you file. Most merchants never claim it. Surface the individual misses through Express Post SLA Breach (refund-clause trigger) and file in batch.
- Check lodgement timing before blaming the network. If the misses cluster on consignments lodged after the last metro acceptance cut-off, the parcel started its guarantee a day late and the network never had a chance. That is a despatch-cut-off problem, not an Australia Post problem; confirm against Orders with Carrier Dispatch SLA Missed.
- Long weekends move the number. During an Easter or state-holiday week the next-business-day target jumps a day for the affected state, and the card correctly counts that. Do not over-read a single quiet-week reading; use the 30-day rolling view.
- Eligibility sets the ceiling. If Express Post Address-Eligibility Rate fell this period, the mix of eligible parcels shifted, which can move this number even when per-lane performance is flat. Read eligibility first.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
Guaranteed-OTD is a contractual performance score. Pair it with these to find cause and recover cost:| Card | Why pair it with Next-Business-Day OTD | What the combination tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Express Post SLA Breach (refund-clause trigger) | The real-time list of the individual misses behind this percentage. | The percentage is the score; the alert list is the refund-claim worklist. File against it. |
| Express Post Address-Eligibility Rate | Defines which parcels are eligible to be scored here. | A falling eligibility rate moves this number without any network failure. Always read first. |
| Orders with Carrier Dispatch SLA Missed | Whether the parcel was lodged in time to have a chance. | If misses cluster on late-lodged parcels, the fault is in your warehouse cut-off, not the carrier. |
| On-Time Delivery Rate | The all-service OTD across Parcel Post and Express combined. | This card isolates the guaranteed premium tier from the blended figure. |
| Avg Transit (days) | The continuous transit-time view behind the binary on-time test. | A lane creeping from 1.0 to 1.4 days predicts a guaranteed-OTD dip before it crosses the line. |
| OTD by Route | Which lanes are missing the guarantee. | Confirms whether the miss is one depot (Perth) or network-wide. |
| Late Shipments | The absolute count of late consignments across all services. | The count is the CS workload; this card is the contractual score for the premium tier. |
Reconciling against the source
Where to look in Australia Post’s own tooling: Article-level delivery timing comes from the Australia Post tracking portal and, for account holders, the MyPost Business and Australia Post Merchant Portal consignment views, which show the lodgement and delivered scans per article. The same scans are exposed through the Shipping & Tracking API tracking-events endpoint. The guaranteed-network membership behind eligibility comes from the Express Post coverage / delivery-estimate response. The closest like-for-like check is to pull a sample of consignments flagged late by this card, open each article in the tracking portal, and confirm the delivered scan date is after the next business day from the lodgement scan. Why our number may legitimately differ from Australia Post’s view:| Reason | Direction | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Scan timezone is carrier-local | Boundary days | Australia Post scan timestamps are recorded in carrier-local time (AEST / AEDT, and the destination’s local zone for cross-state). A delivery scanned at 23:50 local can fall on a different calendar day than a UTC-based naive comparison; the card uses carrier-local day boundaries to match the portal. |
| Tracking-event ingestion lag | Ours can lag | The tracking-events feed pushes scans in batches; lag is typically minutes but can stretch to a few hours at peak. A parcel delivered an hour ago may not yet show delivered in our index; the card holds it as in-transit rather than prematurely marking it late. |
| Business-day / public-holiday calendar | Either | The target skips the destination state’s public holidays. If the portal’s own report uses a different holiday assumption (for example treating a state holiday as a working day), the two can disagree around holidays. |
| Lodgement-scan vs label-print start | Ours is fairer to the carrier | The guarantee clock starts at lodgement. A parcel labelled Monday but lodged Tuesday is scored from Tuesday. A report keyed to label date would understate carrier performance. |
| Refund-eligibility vs delivery-late | Different definitions | A consignment can be delivered late yet not refund-eligible (for example if lodged after cut-off, or if the address was outside the guaranteed network). This card scores delivery against target; refund eligibility is the stricter test surfaced on the SLA breach card. |
| Card | Expected relationship | Causes of legitimate divergence |
|---|---|---|
Cross-connector: shopify.fulfilment_lead_time | Upstream warehouse time before lodgement. | A slow warehouse eats the customer’s expected speed even when carrier OTD is perfect; different population. |
Cross-connector: shopify.refund_rate | Downstream sentiment of missed guarantees. | Refunds have many drivers; guaranteed-OTD misses are one input at a 7-to-14-day lag. |
Known limitations / merchant FAQs
My OTD looks fine but customers say their Express parcel was late. Why the gap? Two usual reasons. (1) The clock starts at lodgement, not order. If a parcel sat on your despatch bench overnight, the customer experienced two days even though the carrier delivered in one business day from lodgement. Check Orders with Carrier Dispatch SLA Missed. (2) Eligibility. The customer may have been outside the Next Business Day Network, so their parcel was never under the guarantee even though you charged Express. Check Express Post Address-Eligibility Rate. How do I actually claim the refunds for the misses? Australia Post’s Express Post guarantee is a postage refund on qualifying misses, claimed through your account. The practical workflow is to use Express Post SLA Breach (refund-clause trigger) to get the article IDs and lodgement / delivered scans, then submit the claim batch through MyPost Business or your account manager. Claim promptly; older misses are harder to substantiate. Why does a parcel delivered “the day after tomorrow” sometimes still count as on time? Business days and public holidays. A parcel lodged on the Friday before a state public-holiday Monday has a next-business-day target of the Tuesday. Delivery on Tuesday is on time even though three calendar days passed. The card applies the destination state’s holiday calendar, which is why it sometimes disagrees with a naive 24-hour rule. Perth always drags my number down. Is that an Australia Post failure? Not necessarily. Cross-continent metro lanes sit at the edge of the next-business-day window and are the most sensitive to a single missed flight or sortation delay. Use OTD by Route to see whether Perth is structurally lower (expected) or has stepped down recently (a network incident worth raising). What is a healthy number? For a metro-skewed eastern-seaboard sender, 96 to 99 percent is normal. The alert at<95% is the level where the count of refund-eligible misses becomes material to claim and worth a conversation with your account manager. Sustained readings below 90 percent point to a real network or lodgement-timing problem.
Does the card count a parcel with no delivered scan as late?
Once its next-business-day target has passed with no delivered scan, yes, it is treated as a miss, consistent with how the portal would show it. If a delivered scan later arrives through the tracking feed, the reading corrects on the next refresh.