At a glance
Real-time count of Sendle cover claims open against shipments: lost parcels and damaged-on-arrival cases where the merchant has filed for cover under Sendle’s standard or extended insurance. Sendle includes basic cover by default (AUD 100 / USD 100); merchants can purchase extended cover up to AUD 1500 / USD 1500 per parcel at booking time.
| What it counts | COUNT(claims WHERE status IN ('open', 'investigating', 'awaiting_evidence')) against the merchant’s account. Sendle uses a single in-house claims process (no carrier-side variance, unlike multi-carrier orchestrators). |
| API endpoint | GET /api/claims (Sendle Claims API). The card reads claim_id, parcel_id, status, claim_type (lost / damaged / missing_contents), claim_amount, currency, created_at, last_update_at. |
| Delivery success criterion | Not applicable, claims are filed because delivery did not succeed (lost) or did not succeed in good condition (damaged). |
| On-time threshold | Not applicable. |
| Returns / RTO | Return-to-sender is a separate flow (Returned to Sender) and does not generate a claim; the parcel reverses without dispute. RTO with damage at return scan would generate a claim. |
| Service level scope | All Sendle services (Standard, Pro, Saver). The cover ceiling differs by tier and by extended-cover purchase. |
| Claim trigger | Filed by the merchant via Sendle dashboard or API, typically after a customer reports non-delivery (>10 days no delivery scan) or damage on arrival (with photo evidence within 5 days of delivery). Sendle does not auto-file. |
| Currency | The open count is dimensionless. Monetary exposure is in claim_amount per claim, denominated in AUD or USD per the parcel’s origin country. The workspace base currency is used for the card’s roll-up if multi-region. |
| Time window | RT (real-time, refreshed every poll cycle). |
| Alert trigger | >0 unresolved >7d. Any claim still in open or investigating status seven calendar days after creation trips the alert. Sendle’s published target SLA is 5 to 10 business days for resolution. |
| Roles | owner, operations, finance |
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your Sendle data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
The same Australian DTC home-goods brand. Reading taken at 09:00 AEDT on 12 Mar 26.| Claim type | Open count | Avg age (days) | Aged >7d (alert) | Avg claim value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lost (parcel never scanned at delivery) | 7 | 11.4 | 6 | AUD 78 |
| Damaged on arrival | 5 | 4.2 | 1 | AUD 142 |
| Missing contents (parcel arrived empty/partial) | 1 | 8.0 | 1 | AUD 65 |
| All claim types (this card) | 13 | 8.4 | 8 | AUD 96 avg |
>0 unresolved >7d is firing on 8 of them. Five things to notice:
- Lost-parcel claims dominate the aged queue. 6 of 8 aged claims are lost-parcels; this is typical because Sendle’s investigation process for lost parcels takes longer than damaged (they need to retrace courier handling). The 11.4-day average sits within Sendle’s 5 to 10 business-day target window, so 6 aged is not unusual.
- Damaged claims resolve fastest. Photo evidence at customer end means Sendle can often pay out within 3 to 5 days. Only 1 of 5 damaged claims is aged; that one likely needs additional evidence.
- The 13 open claims at average AUD 96 = AUD 1,248 outstanding. Material for a small DTC brand. The financial exposure is the operative number for finance; the count is the operative number for operations.
- AU vs US split (if applicable). Multi-region merchants should sub-divide because cover limits and resolution speeds differ. AUD 100 default cover is roughly equivalent to USD 100; cross-region merchants typically have parallel queues that the card pools.
- Claim count rising while OTD is stable suggests theft or address-error. If the late count is flat but lost claims climb, the parcels are not being delayed, they are not arriving at all. Sendle’s investigation often traces these to driver mishandling or fraudulent delivery scans; the card flags the financial exposure, the incident-investigation happens at Sendle’s end.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
Open claims is the financial-exposure tail of operational events. Pair with these to trace cause and impact:| Card | Why pair it with Open Claims | What the combination tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Claim Value (open) | The monetary exposure of the queue. | 13 claims at AUD 50 each is operations noise; 13 claims at AUD 200 each is a finance escalation. |
| Exception Rate | Upstream cause. Exceptions become claims. | Climbing exception rate predicts a 7 to 14 day rise in open-claim count. |
| Failed Deliveries | Failed deliveries that never recover convert to lost-parcel claims. | Failed climb without claim climb = recovery is working. Both climbing = couriers losing parcels. |
| Returned to Sender | Alternative outcome. RTO is the parcel reversing; claim is the parcel disappearing. | RTO climb without claim climb = address-quality issue. Claim climb without RTO climb = courier-side issue. |
| OTD by Route | Identifies which zone is generating most claims. | Zone with high claim share + low OTD = network capacity issue in that zone. |
Cross-connector: shopify.refund_rate | Downstream impact. Lost-parcel claims usually mean the merchant has refunded. | Open-claim spike typically follows Shopify refund-rate spike by 0 to 2 days; merchants refund customer first, file Sendle claim second. |
| Cross-connector: customer-support tickets | Upstream signal. “Where is my order” tickets predict claim filings. | Use as the leading-edge signal. |
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in Sendle’s own dashboard: Sendle Dashboard → Help → My Claims. The page lists all open and historical claims with status, age, claim type, and amount. The closest like-for-like view is Status: Open + Investigating, All Claim Types. Sendle’s claims process is single-vendor, so unlike multi-carrier orchestrators the portal view is exactly authoritative. Why our number may legitimately differ from Sendle’s portal:| Reason | Direction | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Status mapping | Either | Sendle exposes awaiting_evidence separately in the portal; the card pools it under “open”. |
| Real-time freshness | Ours can lag 5 to 15 minutes | The card polls the API at the workspace cadence; the portal reads live. |
| Auto-resolved claims | Ours can lag | Sendle webhook-fires claim resolution; the next poll cycle reflects it. Sub-15-minute lag is normal. |
| Multi-region accounts | Either | Merchants with both AU and US Sendle accounts need each connected separately; the card reads only the connected workspace. |
| Card | Expected relationship | What causes legitimate divergence |
|---|---|---|
shopify.refund_rate | Most lost-parcel claims trace back to a refund. | Replacements instead of refunds; chargebacks routed via payment processor. |
| Stripe / payment-processor disputes | Some carrier issues escalate to chargebacks. | Different timelines. |
| Customer support tools | Predicts claim filings 1 to 3 days ahead. | Tickets that resolve via re-delivery never become claims. |