Skip to main content
Metrics type: Key Metrics • Category: Shipping & Courier
Hours from NetDispatch dispatch event to carrier-side collection scan. The core NetDispatch SLA - >24h lag means warehouse cutoff missed or carrier-side delay.

​
At a glance

Median hours between Net Dispatch label-generation event and the carrier-side collection scan (driver pickup from merchant warehouse). UK-specific operational metric: a long lag means the merchant printed labels but the carrier hasn’t collected, eating into the carrier’s commit window before transit even starts. The “did the carrier turn up to my warehouse on time?” number.

​
Calculation

Calculated automatically from your NetDispatch 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 DTC homeware merchant in Leicester with mid-size warehouse, multi-carrier collection schedule. Reading taken at 09:00 GMT on 12 Mar 26 for the trailing 7 days. The card reads 9.4 hours median (alert at >24h has not tripped at median) but Evri and Yodel individually exceed the threshold. Five things to notice:
  1. DPD at 4.1 hours median is excellent. DPD’s collection routing is highly disciplined; drivers arrive within 30-60 minutes of scheduled window. The 4.1 hours reflects label-print-time and morning-print pattern.
  2. Royal Mail at 6.2 hours is good. RM’s 17:00-18:00 collection is consistent; merchant printing through the morning sees a clean same-day collection cycle.
  3. Evri at 18.4 hours median is the operational headline. Evri collections in some regions (especially mid-Leicester) are unreliable; drivers sometimes miss collection windows entirely. 90th-percentile of 38 hours means 10% of Evri parcels wait nearly 2 days for pickup. This is eating into the 3-5 day Evri commit window.
  4. Yodel at 22.6 hours and 44h 90th-percentile is worse. Should escalate to Net Dispatch CSM for collection-route review.
  5. Combined effect on on-time-delivery. 90th-percentile lag of 24.8 hours across all carriers means 10% of parcels have already lost a day before transit starts. This explains some of the On-Time Delivery Rate softness in the Evri/Yodel subset.
Note: pair with Failed Collection (subset of exception rate showing collections that didn’t happen) and On-Time Delivery Rate. The merchant could shift evening-printed labels to next-day-print to align better with collection cycles, reducing the lag tail.

​
Sibling cards merchants should reference together

​
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard

Where to look in Net Dispatch’s own dashboard: Net Dispatch Dashboard → Reports → Collection Performance. Shows lag per carrier per period. The card mirrors the aggregate. Why our number may legitimately differ from Net Dispatch’s portal: Cross-connector reconciliation:

​
Known limitations / merchant FAQs

Why is Evri’s lag so much higher than Royal Mail’s? Evri’s collection routing uses self-employed couriers with less route-discipline than Royal Mail’s salaried workforce. Drivers prioritise drop-off (delivery) over pickup, especially in busy periods; collection windows can slip 2-4 hours or be missed entirely. The cost saving from Evri (£1-2/parcel) comes with this operational cost. Should I print labels earlier in the day to reduce lag? Yes. If your collection window is 17:00-18:00 and you print labels through the afternoon, anything printed after 16:00 misses today’s collection. Shift label-printing to morning batches (09:00-13:00) wherever possible; the lag drops 6-12 hours on average. Can I add a second daily collection? Yes for high-volume merchants. DPD offers AM-and-PM collection for £8-£15/week; Royal Mail OBA can be configured for 2x daily for £20+/week. Often justified above 100 parcels/day if morning-rush volume is significant. The lag jumped 50% this week. What happened? Three usual causes. (1) Carrier-side route disruption (driver illness, vehicle issue, route restructure). (2) Merchant-side label-print pattern shift (e.g. WMS upgrade pushed printing later in day). (3) Weather affecting carrier collection routes. Investigate via the Failed Collection detail rows. Q4 effect? UK Q4 typically sees 30-80% lag increase as carrier collection routes saturate. Drivers physically can’t fit all merchants. Plan: shift label-printing earlier, request additional collections, switch to drop-off at carrier depots where possible. My DPD collection is 4 hours but Royal Mail is 6 hours. Why the gap? DPD collections are typically earlier in the day (16:00-17:00) and DPD’s drivers are more time-disciplined. Royal Mail collections later (17:00-18:00) plus their later cutoff time means morning-printed labels sit longer. Both are healthy ranges. Drop-off at carrier depot vs collection? Some merchants drop-off Royal Mail or ParcelForce parcels at the local depot or post office instead of waiting for collection. This eliminates lag (the carrier-side scan happens at drop-off) and saves OBA collection fees. Trade-off: requires staff time at drop-off. Worth considering for sub-100-parcel-day merchants. Failed collection vs lagged collection? Failed collection (no carrier-side scan ever, parcel sits indefinitely) is in Exception Rate. Lagged collection (eventually picked up but late) is in this card. Different operational interventions: failed needs carrier escalation; lagged needs print-time discipline.

​
Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

Dispatch-to-Collection Lag is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across NetDispatch 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.