> ## 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, Japan Post > Late Shipments for Japan 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:** [Delivery Performance](/nerve-centre/connectors#connectors-by-type) ## At a glance > Absolute count of Japan Post consignments delivered after the published estimated delivery date for their service tier, in the trailing 7 days. It is the numerator behind the [On-Time Delivery Rate](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/japan-post/on-time-delivery-rate) percentage and the customer-service workload number. Domestic Yu-Pack late count is structurally tiny (well under 1 percent of volume); for cross-border-active merchants the bulk of the count is international EMS, where destination customs adds days. Read the count, not just the percentage: a fine-looking rate can still hide a big pile of WISMO tickets. | | | | ------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | **What it counts** | `COUNT(shipments WHERE delivered_at > expected_delivery_date)` over the rolling 7 days. Each consignment scores once against its own service-tier estimated delivery date. | | **Data source** | `POST /api/v1/tracking/list` reads the tracking-events stream for the delivered scan; `GET /api/v1/shipping/items` provides consignment metadata including `expected_delivery_date` and `service_code`. International scans flow via Japan Post's EMS tracking feed and the destination carrier's last-mile events. | | **Service-tier scope** | Yu-Pack, Yu-Pack Cool (Cool Yu-Pack), EMS, Letter Pack Plus, Letter Pack Light. Each tier carries its own estimated delivery date; the card scores each consignment against its own tier. | | **In-flight handling** | Counts delivered consignments only. A consignment past its estimate but still in transit (no delivered scan) is an exception, not yet a late, and surfaces on [Exception Rate](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/japan-post/exception-rate) until it delivers. | | **Geographic variance** | Domestic late count concentrates in rural prefectures on Mon to Fri delivery (Akita, Yamagata, Iwate). International EMS late count concentrates by corridor: the UK is heaviest post-Brexit customs, parts of Southern Europe slower at customs, some lanes erratic. | | **Return-leg inclusion** | **Outbound only.** Return-to-sender consignments are tagged inbound and filtered out; the return leg lives on [Returned to Sender](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/japan-post/returned-to-sender). | | **Climate / industrial events** | Typhoon (June to October) and winter snow events spike the count for affected weeks. Not auto-excluded: annotate and suppress alerts for known events rather than altering the count. | | **Peak-period seasonality** | Oseibo (mid-December) and Ochugen (mid-July) gift seasons lift the count 1.5 to 2x; international EMS in those windows degrades faster than domestic Yu-Pack. | | **Time window** | `7D` (rolling 7 days). Daily readings are noisy below roughly 200 consignments per day. | | **Alert trigger** | `>5% of total` weekly shipments. For a 4,500/week merchant that is 225 late shipments. Domestic-only merchants rarely trip this; cross-border merchants should set destination-aware thresholds. | | **Roles** | owner, operations | ## Calculation Calculated automatically from your Japan 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 An Akihabara manga and anime collectibles retailer, around 4,500 outbound consignments per week, dual-market: 75 percent domestic Japan via Yu-Pack and Letter Pack, 25 percent cross-border via EMS to a worldwide collector base. Reading taken at 09:00 JST on 12 Mar 26 for the trailing 7 days (06 Mar 26 to 12 Mar 26). | Service tier | Shipments (7D) | Late (delivered after estimate) | Late % | | -------------------------------------- | -------------- | ------------------------------- | -------- | | Yu-Pack (domestic) | 2,925 | 18 | 0.6% | | EMS (international) | 1,125 | 168 | 14.9% | | Letter Pack Plus | 450 | 2 | 0.4% | | **All Japan Post tracked (this card)** | **4,500** | **188** | **4.2%** | The card reads **188** late shipments. The alert at `>5% of total` is **not** tripped at the aggregate (4.2 percent), but EMS alone is at 14.9 percent. Five things to notice: 1. **EMS-international owns 89 percent of the late count.** 168 of the 188 late shipments are EMS, despite EMS being only 25 percent of volume. Of those 168, roughly 78 are EMS to the UK (HMRC customs lag since 2021), 32 are EMS to lanes with erratic last-mile networks, and 28 are EMS to Italy and Spain (slower customs in Southern Europe); the rest spread across other destinations. The domestic network is not the problem here. 2. **The percentage felt fine; the count is the workload.** 188 late deliveries equals roughly 188 customer-service contacts in flight or about to land. At an estimated 8 minutes per WISMO ticket that is around 25 staff-hours of work this week generated by carrier delays. Customer service needs the count, not the rate. 3. **The contacts are bilingual, not Japanese.** Most WISMO tickets will come from UK and EU collectors, because the Japanese customers receive on time and do not file tickets. Staff English-language support against the 25 percent of volume that produces 89 percent of late-related contacts; do not size the CS rota off the headline parcel split. 4. **The domestic 18 is the structural floor.** 18 out of 2,925 Yu-Pack consignments (0.6 percent) is normal Japan Post performance. Most are Friday-shipped parcels to rural prefectures on Mon to Fri delivery, missing a Monday estimate by one day. There is no carrier action to take; the fix, if any, is shipping rural lanes earlier in the week. 5. **The EMS-to-UK band is the one to act on.** 78 late EMS-to-UK consignments in a week is a structural mismatch between Japan Post's published EMS aim to the UK and the post-Brexit customs reality. Either upgrade to EMS Premium for a last-mile guarantee or change checkout copy to "8 to 14 day delivery to the UK"; both shrink the count and the ticket load. ## Sibling cards merchants should reference together Late shipment count is the workload metric. Pair it with these to find the cause and plan the response: | Card | Why pair it with Late Shipments | What the combination tells you | | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | [On-Time Delivery Rate](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/japan-post/on-time-delivery-rate) | The percentage view of the same population. | The percentage tells you how the network is performing; the count tells you how much work customer service has tomorrow. Track both. | | [Exception Rate](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/japan-post/exception-rate) | Leading indicator: consignments that threw a tracking exception. | Domestic exceptions are rare, so a spike here predicts a rising late count at 24 to 48 hours. | | [Avg Transit (days)](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/japan-post/avg-transit-days) | Mean transit creep across the network. | Rising mean transit predicts the late count climbing in 1 to 2 weeks; an early-warning gauge. | | [OTD by Route](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/japan-post/otd-by-route) | Per-prefecture and per-corridor breakdown. | Identifies which domestic lanes or EMS corridors drive the bulk of the lates. | | [Shipments by Destination](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/japan-post/shipments-by-destination) | Geographic concentration of volume. | Confirms whether the late count is domestic or international before you assign a team to it. | | [Failed Deliveries](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/japan-post/failed-deliveries) | The hard subset that never reached the addressee. | Separates "late but delivered" from "did not arrive"; failed deliveries escalate to claims, lates usually do not. | | [First-Attempt Delivery Rate](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/japan-post/first-attempt-delivery-rate) | Door-step success on the first knock. | A falling first-attempt rate adds redelivery cycles that push consignments past their estimate, feeding this count. | | Cross-connector: [`shopify.unfulfilled_orders`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/shopify/unfulfilled-orders) | Upstream input. Orders waiting for a label cannot meet the estimate. | A backlog 2 to 4 days ago shows up as late shipments today. | | Cross-connector: [`shopify.refund_rate`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/shopify/refund-rate) | Downstream consequence. | A weekly late spike at day 0 lifts refunds at day 7 to 14, mostly on the international leg. | ## Reconciling against the vendor's own dashboard **Where to look in Japan Post's own tooling:** For domestic consignments, check the per-parcel delivered status on the Japan Post Tracking Result Inquiry (お荷物追跡) and the despatch list in Web Yu-Pri (Yu-Pri My Page); Yu-Biz contract customers see the same shipment history in the Japan Post Business Customer Portal. For international EMS, the per-item status is on Japan Post's [International Mail Tracking](https://trackings.post.japanpost.jp/services/srv/search/?locale=en), where the EMS aim by destination and the customs events are visible. There is no single "late shipments" report in Japan Post's tooling; the like-for-like view is the delivered consignments whose delivered date is after the tier's estimated delivery date, outbound only, for the last 7 days. **Why our number may legitimately differ from Japan Post's status views:** | Reason | Direction | Why | | -------------------------------- | -------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | **Timezone (JST)** | Boundary days off | Japan Post tooling shows scan timestamps in JST (UTC+9); the card stores in UTC. For a 7-day window, boundary-day shifts move a handful of consignments between days; the weekly total typically agrees within 1 percent. | | **Tracking-event ingestion lag** | Ours can lag | Japan Post's tracking feed pushes scans in batches; ingestion lag runs from around 30 minutes (typical) to 4 hours (peak). A parcel delivered a couple of hours ago may not yet show a delivered scan in our index; we err on the side of "still in transit". | | **EMS customs hold treatment** | Ours can read higher | The card counts an EMS consignment against Japan Post's published destination aim including customs time. Japan Post's own international status sometimes presents a customs hold as a separate state rather than as "late", so the carrier view can show fewer lates. | | **Climate / disruption weeks** | Either | Typhoon and snow-affected lanes the carrier may exclude from official performance stats are still counted by the card; annotate weather weeks rather than editing the count. | | **Peak-period batch processing** | Either | During Oseibo (December) and Ochugen (July) the carrier's status updates can take 3 to 7 days to settle; the card always matches the live tracking API. | **Cross-connector reconciliation:** | Card | Expected relationship | Causes of legitimate divergence | | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | [`shopify.unfulfilled_orders`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/shopify/unfulfilled-orders) | Upstream input. | Webhook delivery failures, manual fulfilment delays, B2B / pre-order flows. | | [`shopify.refund_rate`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/shopify/refund-rate) | Downstream sentiment proxy. | Refunds have many drivers (sizing, quality, returns); late delivery is one input. | ***
Documentation cross-reference (for agencies running multiple shippers) Late-shipment counts exist with conceptually similar definitions across other national-postal carriers. These are not parallel measurements of the same shipments; use these links only to navigate documentation. * [`royal_mail.roy_late_shipments_count`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/royal-mail/late-shipments) (UK national-postal peer) * [`australia_post.aus_late_shipments_count`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/australia-post/late-shipments) (AU national-postal peer)
## Known limitations / merchant FAQs **My OTD shows 95.8 percent and the late count says 188 in 7 days. Which do I act on?** Both, for different teams. The percentage tells the owner whether the customer experience is acceptable; the count tells customer service how many WISMO tickets are about to land. With 89 percent of the count being international EMS, your CS team needs bilingual English capacity for UK and EU collectors, not extra domestic Japanese capacity. Read this card next to [On-Time Delivery Rate](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/japan-post/on-time-delivery-rate) and split the response by team. **Domestic Yu-Pack rarely fires the alert. Should I lower the threshold?** Yes, for domestic-only merchants. The default `>5% of total` is calibrated for cross-border merchants who carry an EMS tail. A pure domestic Japanese merchant should set a count-based threshold (for example, more than 50 late shipments per week) rather than a percentage, because domestic Yu-Pack above 1 percent late is unusual and worth investigating well before it reaches 5 percent. **Why is EMS to the UK alone such a large share of my late count?** Brexit customs. Since January 2021 EMS to the UK passes HMRC customs, which adds 3 to 7 days plus a small stuck-at-customs rate. Japan Post's published EMS aim to the UK does not fully reflect the new normal, so the published aim is consistently missed and the consignments score as late. Two options: ship EMS Premium where Japan Post pays the destination carrier for a last-mile guarantee, or change checkout copy to "8 to 14 day delivery to the UK" so the customer expectation matches reality. **What about typhoons and snow?** Typhoon season runs June through October; major typhoons cause 1 to 3 days of regional disruption, mostly in Kyushu, Shikoku, and along the Pacific coast. Winter snow in Hokkaido and Tohoku adds 1 to 2 days. The card counts these consignments as late. Annotate the alert as weather-driven and re-baseline thresholds for the affected week, then reset when service resumes; do not permanently raise the threshold. **My Yu-Pri despatch list shows 145 late, Vortex IQ shows 188. Why the gap?** Two reasons. First, the carrier's international status sometimes excludes EMS consignments held at destination customs from a late tally, presenting them as "in customs" instead, while the card counts them late against the published aim. Second, JST versus UTC boundary effects shift a few consignments across the weekly window. The 43-unit gap here is roughly the merchant's count of EMS-customs cases plus a small boundary effect. **Does customs hold time count as late on international EMS?** Yes, against Japan Post's published destination aim, which is country-specific and is meant to include normal customs processing. When customs runs slower than the aim assumes (post-Brexit UK, slower Southern European lanes) the consignment scores as late. For cross-border-active merchants international is typically 60 to 90 percent of the total late count. **My alert just fired during Oseibo peak. Is this normal?** Yes. Mid-December Oseibo (and mid-July Ochugen) typically lifts the late count 1.5 to 2x, and international EMS degrades faster than domestic Yu-Pack. The playbook: pre-warn customers in the order-confirmation email, lower customer-service response-time expectations for the peak window, shift time-sensitive cross-border volume to EMS Premium or an alternative where you have one, and re-baseline alert thresholds so you are not re-paged on every reading. Reset thresholds once peak passes. **Why does Shopify show "shipped" but Japan Post tracking shows nothing for a parcel I am about to count as late?** Two-stage handover. Shopify marks the order shipped on label print (`fulfilment.created`); Japan Post's first scan is at acceptance (post-office lodgement or collection), typically a few hours to a day later. If 24 to 48 hours pass with no first scan the parcel was probably never lodged. Cross-check [Label Generation Success](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/japan-post/label-generation-success) and [Exception Rate](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/japan-post/exception-rate); the card treats a never-scanned parcel as in transit until it passes its estimate, then late, even if it was never actually handed to the carrier. *** ### Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre *Late Shipments* is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across Japan 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.