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Metrics type: Key Metrics • Category: Shipping & Courier

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At a glance

Absolute count of Net Dispatch-booked shipments delivered after the carrier’s UK service-promise date in the period. Companion to On-Time Delivery Rate. One-stop weekly worklist for the customer-service team across Royal Mail, DPD, Evri, Yodel, ParcelForce, and other UK carriers.

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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.

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Worked example

A UK DTC homeware merchant via Net Dispatch. Reading taken at 09:00 GMT on 12 Mar 26 for the trailing 7 days. The card reads 185 late shipments for the week; alert at >5% has tripped. Five things to notice:
  1. CS workload tomorrow: 15 to 28 inbound contacts. 8 to 15% of 185 late = 15 to 28 emails, calls, chats. Schedule UK CS team accordingly.
  2. Only 7 of 185 are MBG-eligible (4 DPD Next Day + 3 FedEx UK Express). DPD claims via DPD’s portal; FedEx UK Express via FedEx Billing Online. The other 178 are pure customer-experience cost.
  3. Evri and Yodel together = 116 of 185 late (63%). This is the structural drag. Cost saving from cheap carriers comes with this CS workload. Quantify: extra CS time per late ≈ £3 to £8; 116 lates × £5 ≈ £580/week ≈ £30K/year. Compare to cost saving from using Evri/Yodel (~£2.50/parcel × 4,720 parcels/week ≈ £12K/week). Cheap carriers still net-positive but the trade is real.
  4. Royal Mail Tracked 48 at 3.7% is acceptable for a 2-day commit. Royal Mail Tracked 48 typically runs 3-5% late; this is on plan.
  5. Compare against last week. Volume up 8% week-over-week, late count up 12% week-over-week. Late rate climbing faster than volume; investigate carrier-side issues (UK winter weather, cold-weather backlog).

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Sibling cards merchants should reference together

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Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard

Where to look in Net Dispatch’s own dashboard: Net Dispatch Dashboard → Tracking → Filter “Late deliveries” → Last 7 Days. Each row shows tracking number, carrier, service, scheduled vs actual delivery. Use this as the row-level worklist. Why our number may legitimately differ from Net Dispatch’s portal: Cross-connector reconciliation:

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Known limitations / merchant FAQs

How do I file UK MBG claims for late shipments? DPD: portal at DPD.co.uk under Account → Claims; refund covers freight charge. ParcelForce 24: claims at parcelforce.com. Royal Mail: no automatic late-refund but compensation possible for Special Delivery Guaranteed misses. Evri/Yodel: no UK MBG; track only for CS workload. Should I switch Evri to Royal Mail to reduce my late count? Run the math. If Evri saves £2.50/parcel vs Royal Mail Tracked 48, but generates 3x the late-shipment count, the CS-cost-per-late often makes the trade marginal at high volume. For low-AOV merchants (<£20), Evri usually wins; for AOV £30+, Royal Mail wins by reducing CS leakage. Why does Royal Mail Tracked 48 run higher late count than Tracked 24? Volume. Tracked 48 is the cheaper, larger-volume tier; 3-5% late on 5,820 shipments = ~200-290 lates per 30 days. Tracked 24 has lower volume and slightly tighter network attention, so absolute count is much lower despite similar percentage. My CS team’s count differs from this card. Why? Two reasons. (1) CS counts customer-reported; card counts data-confirmed. (2) CS may include “shipped late from warehouse”; card is delivery-late only. During Royal Mail strikes, do those count? Yes. The card counts every late delivery regardless of cause. During declared CWU strike days, Royal Mail’s own service was suspended, so most affected parcels delivered post-strike, counting as late. During an active strike, expect 5-15 ppt jump in this card’s count for the Royal Mail subset. Should I email customers proactively when their parcel is late? Yes. UK customer expectations are slightly more forgiving than US (delivery is genuinely 2-5 day across most carriers), but proactive contact still reduces inbound CS load 20-40% and improves NPS. How does this differ from the carrier’s own late-count? Net Dispatch normalises across carriers; per-carrier dashboards show only their own. The Net Dispatch view is the unified picture. Per-carrier reports may show slightly different counts due to scan-event polling differences. Q4 effect? UK Christmas peak (mid-November to 24 Dec) typically generates 3x to 5x normal late-count across all carriers. Plan UK CS staffing 2-3x normal for the period. Recovery typically by mid-January.

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Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

Late Shipments 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.