At a glance
Share of ShippyPro shipments that recorded any non-progress tracking event during transit, pooled across every carrier ShippyPro orchestrated. Address invalid, attempted-no-answer, held at depot, customs hold, damaged, lost. The early-warning signal that predicts a falling OTD Rate at 24 to 72 hours, with the wrinkle that each of the 100+ supported carriers has its own exception taxonomy and ShippyPro normalises them.
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your ShippyPro 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 Italian DTC fashion brand (BRT, DHL Express, Poste Italiane, GLS). Reading taken at 09:00 CET on 12 Mar 26 for the trailing 30 days (10 Feb 26 to 11 Mar 26).
Total shipments in window: 16,000. Exception rate: 2.9 percent. The card reads 2.9 percent on the dial; the alert at
>3% is just under the trip line. Five things to notice:
- Per-carrier exception rates differ structurally. The 464 exceptions break down approximately: BRT ~150, Poste Italiane ~180, DHL Express ~50, GLS ~84. Poste Italiane’s exception rate per parcel is the highest of the four; this is structural for a Posta 4 service, not a degradation. Pair with OTD by Route to see where exceptions translate to OTD damage.
- Customs exceptions cluster on UK/CH lanes post-Brexit. The 56 customs exceptions are almost entirely UK-IT and CH-IT cross-border, where commercial-invoice data is incomplete or HS codes are missing. Fix at the label-creation layer: ensure the Shopify or BigCommerce export passes correct
harmonized_codeandcommercial_invoice_valueto ShippyPro. - Address exceptions cluster on Italian addresses with missing CAP or civic number. Italian addresses require CAP (postal code) and civic number; many checkout flows allow these to be skipped. Install Italian-aware address validation (EgonReg, Loqate IT) at checkout. Typical lift: 50 to 70 percent reduction within 30 days.
- The 38 damage / lost cases are claim-eligible. Each is an Open Claim opportunity; claim processes vary materially per carrier (DHL Express auto-resolves at ~5 working days; Poste Italiane statutory window is 30+ days). Track ageing on Open Claims.
- Italian holidays distort the depot-hold category. The 10 to 25 Aug ferragosto window typically lifts depot-hold exceptions by 3 to 5x because Italian carrier networks run skeleton crews. Pre-baseline customer-facing copy on those windows.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
Exception rate is the leading indicator. Pair with these to predict OTD damage and to find the operational lever:Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in ShippyPro’s own dashboard: ShippyPro Dashboard → Tracking → Exceptions (Italian: Eccezioni). The page lists shipments with at least one non-progress event over the chosen window with category, carrier, event timestamp, and resolution status. Closest like-for-like view: Last 30 Days, All Carriers, All Categories. ShippyPro also offers per-country lane filtering useful for diagnosing cross-border patterns. Why our number may legitimately differ from ShippyPro’s portal:
Internal identity (within ShippyPro):
This card relates to OTD Rate by a leading-indicator relationship:
shippy_pro.otd_rate(t) ≈ baseline_otd - 1.5 × Δ(shippy_pro.exception_rate(t-2d))
A 1-point exception-rate rise typically translates to roughly 1.5 points of OTD drop two days later. Forecast-grade, not contractual.
Cross-connector reconciliation. Direct-carrier connectors vs ShippyPro:
If you also have direct-carrier connectors connected (direct DHL Express, direct Poste Italiane, direct GLS), do not sum exception rates. Each direct connector reads from the carrier’s API with the carrier’s native event taxonomy:
- ShippyPro’s view uses normalised taxonomy across all carriers.
- Direct DHL uses DHL’s native event codes which include events ShippyPro buckets differently.
- Differences of 0.2 to 0.5 points are normal; larger gaps suggest the two are filtering shipments or events differently.
Known limitations / merchant FAQs
Why is my ShippyPro exception rate spiking? Three usual causes, in order of likelihood:- Address-quality regression at checkout, especially on Italian addresses. A storefront change (new theme, missing CAP validator) typically produces a step-change in IT address exceptions within 7 to 14 days.
- Carrier capacity stress (ferragosto, Christmas, Pasqua). Italian and EU peak windows lift depot-hold exceptions materially. Ferragosto is the worst.
- Cross-border customs friction. Post-Brexit UK-IT lanes, CH-IT lanes, and any non-EU shipment that requires harmonised codes generate customs exceptions when the label data is incomplete. Recently-added cross-border lanes spike this category.
- Install Italian-aware address validation at checkout. EgonReg, Loqate IT, Subito-Address. Validates CAP, civic number, and address-line completeness against the official Italian post-office database. Typical lift: 50 to 70 percent reduction in IT address exceptions within 30 days.
- Fix the harmonised-code and commercial-invoice flow for cross-border. Most cross-border customs exceptions come from missing or incorrect HS codes; ensure your Shopify or BC export passes correct
harmonized_codeandcommercial_invoice_valueto ShippyPro. Eliminates most customs exceptions on UK / CH / non-EU lanes. - Shift Friday despatch to before lunch. Italian carriers (BRT, Poste) end Friday collection earlier than UK or AU peers; pull cutoffs to 12:00 to claim the Friday morning collection.
- Move medium-value parcels off Poste Italiane. A few cents per parcel for material exception-rate improvement on the affected slice.
- Pre-empt ferragosto with widened ETAs. Customers seeing accurate “delivered by 22 Aug” expectations on a 10 Aug order will not generate as many “where is my order” tickets as those expecting the original 16 Aug. Reduces perceived exception-rate cost even when operational number is unchanged.