> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.vortexiq.ai/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Late Shipments, Australia Post > Late Shipments for Australia Post stores. Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre. How to read it, why it matters, and how to act on it. **Metrics type:** [Key Metrics](/nerve-centre/overview#metrics-types-explained) • **Category:** [Shipping & Courier](/nerve-centre/connectors#connectors-by-type) ## At a glance > Absolute count of Australia Post consignments where the delivered scan landed after the published estimated delivery window for the service tier, in the trailing 7 days. The count is the operational workload behind the [On-Time Delivery Rate](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/australia-post/on-time-delivery-rate) percentage. A 95 percent OTD on 6,800 weekly parcels is 340 late deliveries, which is roughly 340 customer-service tickets in flight. | | | | --------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | **What it counts** | `COUNT(shipments WHERE delivered_at > estimated_delivery_date)` over the trailing 7 days. Deliveries past 14 days roll into RTO/lost territory, see [Returned to Sender](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/australia-post/returned-to-sender). | | **API endpoint** | `GET /shipping/v1/shipments` and `GET /shipping/v1/track/items/{trackingNumber}`. Reads `service_code`, `consignment_id`, `estimated_delivery_date`, `delivered_at`. In-transit consignments not yet delivered are excluded; only consignments with a final delivered scan and a missed aim count. | | **Service-tier scope** | All tracked services (Express Post, Parcel Post, eParcel Premium, StarTrack). The aggregate is the merchant's total workload; per-tier splits live in siblings. | | **Geographic OTD variance** | Late counts skew heavily to remote and regional postcodes where transit-time variance is widest. A merchant with 15 percent volume into outback lanes typically sees 35 to 50 percent of late shipments coming from that 15 percent of volume. | | **Returns / RTO** | Outbound only. Returns leg is excluded. | | **Climate handling** | Cyclone, bushfire, flood events spike the count for affected weeks; not auto-excluded. The card reports the actual surge so the operations team can staff customer service accordingly. | | **Peak-period seasonality** | Late counts roughly 2 to 3 times normal during the 1 to 23 December peak window. Click Frenzy and Black Friday weeks add a 30 to 50 percent surge for 7 to 10 days. | | **Time window** | `7D` (rolling 7 days). The 7-day window is the typical customer-service ticket review cadence. | | **Alert trigger** | `>5% of total` weekly shipments. For a 6,800 parcel/week merchant, alert fires at 340 late shipments. | | **Roles** | owner, operations | ## Calculation Calculated automatically from your Australia Post data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading. ## Worked example The same Brisbane outdoor adventure brand from the [OTD Rate](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/australia-post/on-time-delivery-rate) example, 6,800 outbound parcels per week, mixed Australia Post service mix. Reading taken at 09:00 AEDT on 12 Mar 26 for the trailing 7 days (06 Mar 26 to 12 Mar 26). | Service tier | Shipments (7D) | Late | Late % | | ------------------------------ | -------------- | ------- | -------- | | Parcel Post | 3,740 | 252 | 6.7% | | Express Post | 2,040 | 75 | 3.7% | | StarTrack Premium | 680 | 16 | 2.4% | | eParcel Premium | 340 | 9 | 2.6% | | **All AP tracked (this card)** | **6,800** | **352** | **5.2%** | The card reads **352 late shipments** for the trailing 7 days. The alert at `>5% of total` is just tripped (352/6,800 = 5.2 percent). Three observations: 1. **Parcel Post is the workload driver.** 252 late Parcel Post shipments are 71 percent of the total late count, despite Parcel Post being only 55 percent of volume. The customer-service queue this week will be dominated by Parcel Post WISMO ("where is my order") tickets. 2. **The remote tail compounds during wet weeks.** Splitting by destination, 134 of the 352 late shipments (38 percent) went to remote/outback postcodes which are 15 percent of volume. Tropical Cyclone activity north of the Tropic of Capricorn this week added roughly 80 of those 134. 3. **Express Post late count is structural baseline.** 75 late Express Post shipments per 7 days is the level for this merchant outside peak. It comes from non-Express-Post-Network postcodes paying the premium but receiving 2 to 4 day delivery, not from network failure on the metro corridors. ## Sibling cards merchants should reference together | Card | Why pair it with Late Shipments | What the combination tells you | | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | [On-Time Delivery Rate](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/australia-post/on-time-delivery-rate) | The percentage view of the same population. | Percentage tells you the customer-felt rate; this count tells you the operations workload. | | [Exception Rate](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/australia-post/exception-rate) | Predictor at 24 to 72 hour lag. | Spike in exceptions today predicts a spike in lates over the next few days. | | [OTD by Route](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/australia-post/otd-by-route) | Where the late shipments are going. | Confirms whether the spike is regional or network-wide. | | [Avg Transit (days)](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/australia-post/avg-transit) | Mean transit creep is a leading indicator of late count. | A 0.5 day transit increase usually precedes a doubling of late count within 7 days. | | [Failed Deliveries](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/australia-post/failed-deliveries) | Different failure mode (attempted but not delivered). | Distinguishes "couriered late but landed" from "couriered on time but no one home". | | Cross-connector: [`shopify.unfulfilled_orders`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/shopify/unfulfilled-orders) | Upstream input. Slow fulfilment makes late count worse. | A backlog 2 to 4 days ago is now a late-shipment surge today. | | Cross-connector: [`shopify.refund_rate`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/shopify/refund-rate) | Downstream consequence. | Late count spike at day 0 typically drives a refund rate spike at day 7 to 14. | ## Reconciling against the vendor's own dashboard **Where to look in Australia Post's own portal:** [Australia Post Business](https://auspost.com.au/business) → **MyPost Business → Reports → Shipment Status → Filter: delivered late**. Larger eParcel customers find the same view in [eParcel Customer Centre](https://auspost.com.au/business/shipping/business-shipping-solutions/eparcel) → **Performance → Late Shipments Report**. **Why our number may legitimately differ from Australia Post's report:** | Reason | Direction | Why | | ----------------------------------- | ---------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | **Timezone (AEDT/AEST/AWST)** | Boundary day off | Portal reports in account timezone; card stores UTC. A late shipment delivered at 23:30 AEDT shows different "day" depending on which side you read. | | **Customs lag for international** | Ours higher | International EMS consignments awaiting customs clearance overseas can sit "in transit" for 5 to 14 days; the portal sometimes pauses the SLA clock during customs, the card does not. | | **Climate-driven exception spikes** | Either | Postcodes under official network impact notification (cyclone, flood) are sometimes excluded from the portal's "late" tally; the card always counts them. | | **Peak-period batch processing** | Either | November to December the portal can show a 5 to 7 day lag in the late-shipment tally while batches catch up; the card surfaces what the API has actually returned. | | **In-transit-but-already-late** | Ours lower | The card counts only consignments with a final delivered scan past aim. The portal sometimes flags in-transit consignments past their aim as "late" already; the card calls those "exceptions" not "late". | **Cross-connector reconciliation:** | Card | Expected relationship | Causes of legitimate divergence | | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------- | ------------------------------------ | | [`shopify.unfulfilled_orders`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/shopify/unfulfilled-orders) | Upstream input. | Webhook delays, B2B/pre-order flows. | | [`shopify.refund_rate`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/shopify/refund-rate) | Downstream sentiment. | Refund rate has many drivers. | ***
Documentation cross-reference (for agencies running multiple shippers) * [`royal_mail.roy_late_shipments_count`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/royal-mail/late-shipments) (UK national-postal peer) * [`usps.usp_late_shipments_count`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/usps/late-shipments) (US national-postal peer)
## Known limitations / merchant FAQs **The OTD Rate dial says 95 percent and the late count says 352 in 7 days. Which do I act on?** Both, for different teams. The percentage is the merchant-facing dial that tells you whether the customer experience is acceptable. The count is the customer-service workload that tells you how many WISMO tickets are about to land. A team running customer support will care about the count; a team negotiating service credits with Australia Post will care about the percentage. **Why is the late count so much higher in December and January?** December is the Australian Christmas peak (3 to 4x normal volume); January slows but the carry-over from late-December backlog can keep late counts elevated for the first 2 weeks of January. Australia Post protects Express Post capacity but Parcel Post compresses 4 to 8 OTD points during peak, which doubles or triples the absolute late count. **My MyPost Business portal says 290 late and Vortex IQ says 352. Why?** Two common reasons: (1) the portal sometimes excludes postcodes under network impact notifications during cyclone/flood; the card never excludes; (2) the portal classifies in-transit-past-aim consignments as "late already" while the card waits for the delivered scan and counts them at delivery. The two should agree to within 5 to 10 percent on a 7-day window outside weather events. **How do I split out climate-related lates from process-related lates?** Use [OTD by Route](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/australia-post/otd-by-route). Climate-driven lates are concentrated in tropical postcodes (4XXX, 4870 to 4895, 0800 to 0899) and Western WA; process-driven lates are spread evenly across the network or concentrated in your highest-volume metros. If your late count is up 30 percent and the increase is all in northern Queensland, it is the wet season; if it is uniform, it is your warehouse or Australia Post's network. **Customs adds days to my international EMS shipments. Are those counted as late?** Yes, against the published EMS aim-by date. Australia Post's EMS aim is destination-country-specific (3 to 5 business days to NZ, 5 to 8 to UK/EU, 5 to 10 to US); customs clearance time is included in the aim. If a parcel sits in destination customs for 14 days, it counts as late on this card. International is typically 5 to 15 percent of late count for cross-border-active merchants. **StarTrack is barely showing in my late count. Should I move more volume to it?** StarTrack's network is structurally faster but only on lanes its fleet covers (mostly metro and major regional). Moving non-metro volume to StarTrack does not gain reliability because StarTrack subcontracts those lanes back to Australia Post. The cost premium is 60 to 100 percent over Parcel Post; the OTD gain on metro is 4 to 6 points. Worth it for high-value or B2B; not worth it for low-margin DTC. **Why does the count spike on Mondays?** Weekend processing. Australia Post does not do Saturday or Sunday delivery for Parcel Post; consignments scanned in Friday afternoon often deliver Tuesday rather than Monday, which means anything with a Monday aim arrives Tuesday and counts as late. The card honours the published aim, the spike is the structural artefact of the M-F delivery cadence. Tighten checkout copy to set Monday-after-Friday-order expectations. **My alert just fired at 5.2 percent. What should I do first?** (1) Check Australia Post's [service updates page](https://auspost.com.au/about-us/news-media/important-updates) for any active network event. (2) Check [OTD by Route](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/australia-post/otd-by-route) for geographic concentration. (3) Check [Exception Rate](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/australia-post/exception-rate) for upstream label-data issues. If all three are clean, the spike is likely organic peak surge; the action is to staff CS for the WISMO wave and tighten checkout copy. If any of the three is hot, address that first. *** ### Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre *Late Shipments* is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across Australia Post and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. Nerve Centre runs the detection layer; Vortex Mind investigates the cause when something moves; Ask Viq lets you interrogate any number in plain English. [Start for free](https://app.vortexiq.ai/login) or [book a demo](https://www.vortexiq.ai/contact-us) to see this metric running on your own data.