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Metrics type: Key Metrics • Category: Exceptions & Claims

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At a glance

Live count of EasyPost insurance claims that are not yet resolved. These are claims you have filed against EasyPost’s parcel-insurance product for parcels lost, damaged or arriving with contents missing in transit. The count is money the merchant is owed and has not yet recovered, plus a backlog signal: a claim sitting unresolved for more than a week usually means missing documentation or a stalled carrier investigation. Read the cash value of the backlog on Claim Value (open).

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Calculation

Calculated automatically from your EasyPost data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.

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Worked example

The same US apparel merchant from Late Shipments, insuring higher-value parcels (orders over 75 US dollars) through EasyPost at purchase. Reading taken live at 09:00 ET on 12 Mar 26. The card reads 13 open claims. The alert at >0 unresolved >7d has tripped: the four “submitted, awaiting our docs” claims and some of the “under review” set are past the 7-day line. Five things to notice:
  1. The alert is about ageing, not volume. Thirteen open claims is normal background for a merchant insuring 75-dollar-plus parcels; the alert fires because some have aged past a week. The action is not “file fewer claims”, it is “clear the backlog”.
  2. The “awaiting our docs” four are self-inflicted and the fastest win. EasyPost has asked for proof of value (the order invoice) or damage photos and not received them. These claims will never pay until you upload the documents. Clearing them is a 20-minute admin task that recovers 1,180 US dollars; do it today.
  3. The “under review” six are a carrier-investigation wait. For lost parcels the underlying carrier (USPS, FedEx) runs its own trace before EasyPost pays. This subset is genuinely out of your hands, but a claim open beyond 14 days warrants a chase note in the EasyPost dashboard.
  4. The “approved, not yet paid” three are already won. They clear automatically; they only show here because payment settles on EasyPost’s cycle. No action, but they explain why the count does not drop to zero even when you are on top of it.
  5. Watch the filing deadline. EasyPost insurance claims must be filed within a fixed window from the ship date (commonly tens of days for damage, longer for loss, but always finite). A claim that ages here is also ageing toward the point where it cannot be filed at all. The 7-day alert exists to catch this well before the cliff.

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Sibling cards merchants should reference together

Open Claims is the recovery-backlog count. Pair it with these to see the cash at stake and the failures that feed it:

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Reconciling against the source

Where to look in the EasyPost dashboard and in the underlying carriers’ own portals: EasyPost is an aggregator, so claims reconciliation has two layers. First, the EasyPost dashboard: EasyPost Dashboard → Insurance / Claims, which lists every claim with its status, filed date, tracking code and value. This is the authoritative record for EasyPost-insured claims and is what the card mirrors. Second, where a claim depends on a lost-parcel trace, the underlying carrier’s own portal (USPS, FedEx, UPS) holds the investigation status; EasyPost cannot pay a loss claim until that carrier trace closes, so a claim stuck “under review” here is often waiting on the carrier, not on EasyPost. The closest like-for-like view in EasyPost is the Claims list filtered to any status other than resolved, rejected or paid. Why our number may legitimately differ from EasyPost’s record: Cross-connector reconciliation:

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Known limitations / merchant FAQs

What is the difference between an EasyPost insurance claim and a carrier money-back-guarantee refund? An EasyPost insurance claim covers a parcel that was lost or damaged, paid out by EasyPost’s insurance product, and is what this card counts. A carrier money-back guarantee refunds the postage on a late-but-delivered premium parcel (FedEx Express, USPS Priority Mail Express) and is filed in the carrier’s own portal. They are separate recovery streams with separate deadlines; the late-MBG path is referenced from Late Shipments. Why is a claim stuck “under review” for two weeks? For loss claims, EasyPost usually cannot pay until the underlying carrier completes its own parcel trace, which can take one to three weeks at USPS and FedEx. For damage claims the wait is normally documentation: EasyPost wants the order invoice (proof of value) and clear photos of the damage and packaging. Check the EasyPost claim detail for the exact blocker before assuming it is a carrier delay. A claim shows here but I have already been paid. Why? Sync lag. The card refreshes on the standard cycle, so an approved-and-paid claim can linger for one refresh before it clears to resolved. If it persists across several cycles, force a refresh; if it still shows, the claim status in EasyPost may still read “approved” rather than “paid”. How do I stop the alert firing every week? Clear the ageing subset, do not raise the threshold. Most ageing claims are “awaiting our docs”, which is a quick admin fix. The alert is doing its job: a claim that ages out is recoverable cash you are about to forfeit. If a specific claim is genuinely blocked on a carrier trace you cannot influence, that is the rare legitimate exception. Do test-mode claims count? No. Claims filed against an EasyPost test API key are excluded. Should I insure every parcel to maximise recoverable claims? No, insure by value and risk. The premium on low-value parcels usually exceeds the expected loss recovery. The common pattern is to insure orders above a value threshold (the worked example uses 75 US dollars) and self-insure the rest. The aim is to minimise net cost of loss, not to maximise claim count. The count suddenly froze and stopped moving. What does that mean? Most often a credential or sync problem rather than a real change. Check Days to Token Expiry and API Error Rate; an expired API key or a spike in API errors can stall claim sync so the count sits still even as claims are filed and paid in the EasyPost dashboard.

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Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

Open Claims is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across EasyPost 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 or book a demo to see this metric running on your own data.