At a glance
Real-time count of open Shippo Insurance claims for damaged, lost, or stolen parcels. The merchant-facing “money still owed back to me” number, surfaced as a count rather than a value to keep the per-claim case load visible.
| What it counts | COUNT(claims WHERE status IN ('SUBMITTED','UNDER_REVIEW','PENDING_DOCUMENTATION') AND closed_at IS NULL). Excludes paid-out and rejected claims (those are terminal). |
| API endpoint | Shippo GET /insurance/claims (Insurance API). Reads claim_object_id, status, submitted_at, claim_amount, incident_type. |
| Eligible incidents | Three types covered by Shippo Insurance: damage on arrival, total loss in transit, theft (porch piracy where signature was not required). Insurance must have been added at label-purchase time; un-insured shipments cannot file. |
| Carrier scope | All carriers Shippo brokers (USPS, UPS, FedEx, DHL). Note USPS Priority Mail includes $100 of free insurance; declared values above that need explicit Shippo Insurance. |
| Coverage cost | Shippo Insurance is roughly 1.5 to 3% of declared value, with a 2.65 for $100 coverage). |
| Filing window | Damage: 30 days from delivery. Loss: 60 days from ship date for domestic, 90 days for international. Past-window claims are auto-rejected; the card excludes them. |
| Resolution typical time | 7 to 21 business days for clean cases (full documentation submitted upfront). 30 to 60 days for cases requiring back-and-forth. The >7d unresolved alert captures the slow tail. |
| Returns / RTO | RTO is not an insurance event. RTO is a delivery-attempt failure tracked separately in Returned to Sender. |
| Time window | RT (real-time). The count reflects live open-claim state, not a historical period. |
| Alert trigger | >0 unresolved >7d, fires whenever any claim has been open more than seven days without a status change. |
| Roles | owner, operations, finance |
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your Shippo 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 US DTC home-fragrance brand on Shopify, ~6,000 shipments per month via Shippo, mostly USPS Priority Mail with Shippo Insurance bought on every parcel valued over $50. Reading taken at 11:00 ET on 12 Mar 26.| Claim type | Open count | Total claimed value | Avg days open |
|---|---|---|---|
| Damage on arrival | 8 | $640 | 9 |
| Total loss in transit | 3 | $385 | 14 |
| Theft (signature not required) | 2 | $215 | 12 |
| All open claims (this card) | 13 | $1,240 | 11.4 |
>0 unresolved >7d tripped (10 of 13 are past 7 days). Five things to notice:
- Damage is the biggest count. Eight of 13 claims are damage-on-arrival, suggesting either fragile-product packaging needs review or a particular carrier hub is rough on parcels. Cross-reference with Cost Outliers for re-ship cost patterns and Exception Rate for damage scans.
- The 11.4 day average tells you Shippo Insurance is processing slowly this month. Typical clean cases close in 7 to 14 days; 11.4 is at the upper end. Possible causes: incomplete documentation on the merchant’s side (missing photo of damaged item), or carrier-side delay providing proof of loss.
- **1,240 is currently locked up pending approval. Most clean cases pay out at 80 to 100% of claimed value.
- Theft / porch piracy is 2 cases. Both will require police-report numbers from the recipient before Shippo will pay out. If the recipient cannot or will not file, the case dies. Forewarn the customer at file-time.
- **The brand should add signature-required for parcels over 100+ packages where signature was not required. Signature-required adds ~$3 per parcel for USPS, breakeven at one prevented loss.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
Open claims is a working-capital card. Pair it with these to manage the case load:| Card | Why pair it with Open Claims | What the combination tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Claim Value (open) | The dollar version of the same data. | Count tells you CS workload; value tells you revenue-at-risk. Read together for prioritisation. |
| Exception Rate | Upstream cause for damage claims. | A damage-scan exception today predicts a damage claim 1 to 3 days from now. |
| Failed Deliveries | Upstream cause for loss claims. | A “lost in transit” delivery typically converts to a loss claim 7 to 14 days later. |
| Returned to Sender | Different failure mode. | RTO is not an insurance event; it is a delivery-attempt failure. Track separately. |
Cross-connector: shopify.refund_rate | Downstream impact when claims are slow. | Slow claims increase the temptation to issue Shopify refunds without waiting; the merchant pays twice if the claim eventually pays out. |
| Cross-connector: customer NPS / Klaviyo post-purchase survey | Downstream sentiment. | Customers waiting on damage replacement score lower NPS until resolved. |
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in Shippo’s own dashboard: Shippo App → Insurance → Claims. The closest like-for-like view is All Statuses except Paid and Rejected. Each row shows claim ID, parcel value, incident type, and current status with sub-states the API does not expose. Why our number may legitimately differ from Shippo’s report:| Reason | Direction | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Status taxonomy | Either | Shippo’s UI shows sub-states (“awaiting carrier confirmation”, “pending photo upload”); the API rolls these into the UNDER_REVIEW umbrella. Counts match; UI categorisation differs. |
| Time zone | None | Real-time card; the count is the same regardless of zone. |
| Sync lag | Ours lower for new claims | Newly filed claims appear in Shippo’s UI immediately but take 5 to 30 minutes to surface in the API. |
| Past-window auto-rejection | Ours excludes terminal | Claims rejected for past-deadline filing are excluded from the open count even though they may still appear in some Shippo views. |
| Card | Expected relationship | What causes legitimate divergence |
|---|---|---|
| Carrier-direct claims (USPS Domestic Claims Inquiry, UPS Capital Insurance) | Independent claim systems. | Merchants who insure carrier-direct (rare on Shippo brokered shipments) have parallel claims. The card only reads Shippo Insurance claims. |
shopify.refund_rate | Indirect downstream. | Merchants who refund customers immediately and recover from Shippo Insurance separately will have refund-rate climb without claim-count climb. |
Known limitations / merchant FAQs
Should I file claims through Shippo Insurance or carrier-direct? Through Shippo Insurance, almost always. Carrier-direct claims (USPS Domestic Claims, UPS) require physical paperwork mailed to addresses, take 30 to 90 days, and pay out at lower rates than Shippo Insurance. Shippo Insurance is API-driven, processed in 7 to 21 days, and pays out at 90 to 100% of declared value for documented cases. The customer says the parcel arrived damaged. What documentation does Shippo need? Three items: (1) photos of the damaged item AND the original packaging, (2) original sale value (Shopify order screenshot is fine), (3) declared value at label-purchase (already on the Shippo record). Submit at Shippo App → Insurance → File a Claim. The Shippo Insurance API endpoint isPOST /insurance/claims for headless filing.
The customer says the parcel never arrived. When can I file a loss claim?
USPS: 7 days after expected delivery for Priority, 14 days for Ground Advantage. UPS / FedEx: 24 hours after the last tracking scan stops updating, but Shippo recommends 7 days to allow recovery. International (DHL): 14 days. The card excludes claims filed before the carrier’s eligibility window because they will auto-reject.
Theft / porch piracy claims, what is the catch?
Two catches. (1) The shipment must NOT have been signature-required (signature-required parcels are protected by carrier-side liability separately). (2) The recipient must file a police report and provide the report number. Without it, Shippo Insurance will not pay out. Tell customers up front: “If your parcel says delivered but you did not receive it, file a police report at your local department within 48 hours, then send us the report number and we will refund/reship”.
My claim is at 14 days unresolved. Should I escalate?
Yes. Email Shippo support (support@goshippo.com) referencing the claim ID and asking for a status update. Most stuck claims need a documentation nudge from the merchant or a carrier-side action that has not happened. The >7d alert gives you the trigger.
I refunded the customer immediately, then the claim paid out. What happens?
You keep the claim payout; the customer keeps the refund. This is the cost of immediate-refund customer-service policy. To avoid double-paying, hold the customer refund pending claim resolution and communicate timeline (“we will refund or reship within 14 to 21 days while we recover from the carrier”). Margin-conscious shops do this; CS-first shops accept the double-pay as a service-quality cost.
What is the typical payout rate?
Clean cases (full documentation, clear incident, within filing window) pay out at 90 to 100% of declared value. Edge cases (partial documentation, late filing, signature-required theft) pay out at 50 to 75% if at all. Shippo’s average across all merchants is roughly 85% of total claimed value paid out.
Q4 / BFCM, claims spike. Is the alert useful?
Yes. The alert at >0 unresolved >7d is volume-agnostic and stays useful at peak. The dollar threshold in Claim Value (open) is more useful for prioritisation when the count gets high; sort the underlying table by claim value descending.
Can I see the claim value alongside the count?
Yes, in the sibling card Claim Value (open). This card surfaces the case-load count; the value card surfaces the working-capital exposure. Read together for a full picture.
International parcels, do they have different claim rules?
Yes. International filing windows are longer (60 to 90 days for loss vs 30 to 60 domestic). Customs-confiscated parcels are not insurable. Shippo Insurance covers DHL Express international parcels but not all carriers; check the carrier’s coverage at label-purchase time.