At a glance
Share of parcels booked through Net Dispatch (the UK multi-carrier shipping management platform aggregating Royal Mail, DPD, Hermes Evri, Yodel, ParcelForce, DHL, FedEx UK, and regional carriers) delivered on or before the carrier’s published service-promise date. UK ecommerce is multi-carrier by default; Net Dispatch consolidates the rate-shopping, label generation, and tracking across them with a single integration.
| What it counts | COUNT(Net Dispatch shipments WHERE delivery_date <= promised_date) / COUNT(delivered shipments) over the trailing 30 days. Net Dispatch reads each underlying carrier’s commit and delivery scan via its unified API. |
| Delivery success criterion | Net Dispatch normalises carrier-specific delivery scans into a unified Delivered status. Royal Mail, DPD, Hermes/Evri, Yodel, ParcelForce, DHL, FedEx UK each post their own scan-event taxonomy; Net Dispatch maps them to common delivery confirmation. |
| On-time threshold | delivery_date ≤ promised_date from the carrier’s UK service standard. Royal Mail Tracked 24 commits next-business-day; Tracked 48 in 2 days; DPD Next Day commits next-business-day-by-12:00; Evri 3-5 day commits in window. Each shipment scored against its booked carrier-and-service. |
| Returns / RTO | Excluded. Tracked separately. |
| Service level scope | All Net Dispatch-booked services pooled by default. To split by carrier, use Shipments by Service. |
| UK-specific reliability profile | Carrier reliability varies more in UK than US. Royal Mail Tracked 24 typically 95-98% on-time; DPD Next Day 96-99% (the strongest UK on-time); Evri 88-93% (cheapest, weakest on-time); Yodel 86-92%. Net Dispatch’s rate-shopping balances cost and reliability; merchants paying for Evri/Yodel get cost saving but accept the OTD trade. |
| Brexit international lanes | UK→EU and UK→Rest-of-World shipments now require customs declarations; on-time rates on these lanes are 5-15 ppt lower than pre-Brexit baseline. Net Dispatch handles the customs-declaration workflow within the booking flow. |
| Holiday surge | UK Christmas peak (mid-November to 24 Dec) typically degrades on-time by 6-12 ppt across all carriers. Royal Mail’s pre-Christmas industrial action periods (CWU disputes 2022-2024) added another 5-10 ppt drop in affected windows. |
| Time window | 30D vsP (rolling 30 days, period-over-period comparison) |
| Alert trigger | <95% (warn) / <90% (critical), sentiment thresholds at good=95, warn=90 |
| Sentiment key | gauge with thresholds good=95, warn=90 |
| Roles | owner, operations |
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 routing all parcels through Net Dispatch, primary fulfilment in Leicester (East Midlands). Reading taken at 09:00 GMT on 12 Mar 26 for the trailing 30 days vs the prior 30 days.| Underlying Carrier | Shipments | On-Time | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Royal Mail Tracked 48 | 5,820 | 96.4% | Cheapest national tier, 2-day commit |
| Royal Mail Tracked 24 | 2,180 | 97.1% | Next-day, premium UK tier |
| DPD Next Day | 1,420 | 98.5% | Strongest UK reliability, 12:00 commit |
| Evri 3-5 Day | 3,940 | 89.2% | Cheap, slow, drags the headline |
| Yodel Standard | 880 | 87.4% | Cheap regional, also drags |
| FedEx UK Express (international) | 220 | 94.5% | UK→EU and beyond |
| All carriers (this card) | 14,460 | 94.0% | aggregate vs 92.8% prior (+1.2 ppt) |
- Evri and Yodel are the structural drag. Together 4,820 shipments at ~88% on-time pull the aggregate down by ~3 ppt. The cost saving (Evri at £1.95/parcel vs DPD at £4.50) is real but the customer-experience cost is real too. Decision: how much CS workload and refund leakage justifies the £2.55 saving per parcel.
- DPD at 98.5% justifies its premium. £4.50/parcel for next-business-day-by-12:00 commit is the strongest UK proposition; merchants moving high-value or time-sensitive volume to DPD see fewer customer complaints and fewer “where is my parcel” emails.
- Royal Mail Tracked 24 vs DPD Next Day. Same commit window (next-business-day), DPD slightly more reliable, Royal Mail typically £1-2 cheaper. The merchant uses both with rate-rules; for B2C high-value, DPD; for B2C standard, Royal Mail.
- The 866 missed shipments aren’t all “carrier’s fault”. UK address-quality issues (missing flat numbers in flat blocks, postcode-typo errors), recipient-not-home in dense urban areas, weekend backlog, weather (UK winter storms named since 2015) all contribute. Actionable subset is roughly 50-70%.
- Brexit international lane (FedEx UK) at 94.5% is good given the customs friction. Pre-Brexit, UK→EU lanes ran 96-98%; the 1.5-3 ppt drop is the customs friction cost. Mitigation: Net Dispatch’s customs-declaration workflow plus IOSS registration where applicable.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
| Card | Why pair it with On-Time Delivery Rate | What the combination tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Avg Shipping Cost | Cost-quality trade. | UK shippers face the cost-vs-reliability trade most acutely (Evri £1.95 at 88% OTD vs DPD £4.50 at 98%). Both cards together quantify the trade. |
| NetDispatch OTD by Sales Channel | Channel split. | UK marketplaces (Amazon UK, eBay UK, OnBuy) have different SLAs; channel-by-channel breakdown surfaces marketplace-specific OTD problems. |
| Dispatch-to-Collection Lag | Upstream timing. | UK-specific: how long between merchant booking and carrier pickup. Long lag eats into the carrier’s commit window. |
| Late Shipments | Absolute count. | CS workload metric. |
| Shipments by Service | Carrier-mix split. | Identifies which carrier is dragging headline. |
| Exception Rate | Lead indicator. | Cross-carrier exceptions catch upstream issues. |
Cross-connector: royal_mail.rm_otd_rate | Direct-Royal-Mail subset comparison. | When merchant has direct Royal Mail Account integration alongside Net Dispatch. |
Cross-connector: dpd.dpd_otd_rate | Direct-DPD subset. | Same. |
Cross-connector: shopify.unfulfilled_orders | Upstream cause. | Backlog predicts on-time-rate dip 1-3 days later. |
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in Net Dispatch’s own dashboard: Net Dispatch Dashboard → Reports → Performance → On-Time Delivery, filter by All Carriers, Last 30 Days. Net Dispatch surfaces a similar aggregate plus per-carrier breakdown. Why our number may legitimately differ from Net Dispatch’s portal:| Reason | Direction | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Carrier scoping | Either | Portal allows per-carrier drill-down; card aggregates by default. |
| Polling lag | Ours lower for “today” | Net Dispatch polls underlying carriers every 30-60 minutes; today’s reading may slightly lag. |
| Service-disruption flagging | Either | When carriers (notably Royal Mail during industrial action) flag suspended service, Net Dispatch may exclude flagged shipments from on-time reports; card includes everything. |
| Time zone | Boundary days | UTC vs UK local time on dashboard. |
| Card | Expected relationship | What causes legitimate divergence |
|---|---|---|
royal_mail.rm_otd_rate | Net Dispatch-routed Royal Mail subset of this card. | Direct-Royal-Mail numbers may include shipments not booked through Net Dispatch. |
dpd.dpd_otd_rate | Same for DPD. | Same. |
shopify.unfulfilled_orders | Upstream order source. | Order-to-label lag affects starting clock. |