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Metrics type: Key MetricsCategory: Shipping & Courier

At a glance

Real-time count of carrier claims open against shipments orchestrated by ShippyPro: lost parcels, damaged goods, mis-deliveries where the merchant has filed a claim with the underlying carrier (BRT, DHL, GLS, DHL Express, Poste Italiane etc.) and is waiting on resolution. Because ShippyPro is multi-carrier, an “open claim” can sit with any one of the 100+ supported carriers; the card pools 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 (multi-carrier ShippyPro setup), reading taken at 09:00 CET on 12 Mar 26. The card reads 45 in the headline; the alert at >0 unresolved >7d is firing on 32 of them. Five things to notice:
  1. Poste Italiane dominates the aged-claim queue. 21 of the 32 aged claims sit with Poste; their statutory 30-day window before Poste even responds is structural. Operationally, this is “expected age” not “lost paperwork”. The fix is not chasing harder; it is shifting volume off Poste for high-value parcels.
  2. DHL Express is the benchmark. Three claims, all under 3 days, none aged. DHL’s 5-working-day auto-resolve on lost parcels is real; their claims SLA is the cleanest in the carrier mix. If your DHL claim count is climbing relative to volume, something in the lane (customs, theft hot-spot) is breaking the typical pattern.
  3. The 14 BRT claims are the actionable middle. Big enough to chase, fast enough to resolve. Claims aged >10 days at BRT typically need an account-manager nudge to escalate; their default queue runs slow but responds to push.
  4. Mix of lost vs damaged matters. 30 of 45 claims are lost (no delivery scan, parcel never arrived) vs 14 damaged. Lost claims pay out more often (carriers absorb the loss); damaged claims need merchant-side photo evidence and pay out less reliably. Read Claim Value (open) to see expected vs at-risk.
  5. Aged-claim count is a finance signal as much as an operations signal. 32 aged claims at average value EUR 65 = EUR 2,080 outstanding. If they age past statutory windows (varies per carrier, typically 90 to 180 days), the merchant loses the claim entirely. The card surfaces the queue; finance writes off when aged >180 days.

Sibling cards merchants should reference together

Open claims is a queue depth, not a rate. Pair with these to size the impact and find the cause:

Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard

Where to look in ShippyPro’s own dashboard: ShippyPro DashboardClaims & Disputes → Open Claims (Italian: “Reclami Aperti”). The portal shows the same roster with carrier filter, age column, and claim-amount column. The closest like-for-like view is Status: Open + Pending, All Carriers. ShippyPro also shows the carrier’s last response timestamp, useful for diagnosing “why has this claim not moved”. Why our number may legitimately differ from ShippyPro’s portal: Cross-connector reconciliation:

Known limitations / merchant FAQs

Why are my Poste Italiane claims always aged >7 days? Structural. Poste Italiane’s statutory response window for lost-parcel claims is up to 30 calendar days from filing. The 7-day alert threshold is generic; for Poste-heavy merchants, raise it to 30 days for Poste-only claim type. Operationally, “aged Poste claim” is normal until day 30; only escalate beyond that. A claim resolved on the carrier side but the card still shows it open. Why? Webhook latency. ShippyPro receives a resolution webhook within minutes for major carriers (DHL, GLS, BRT) and the next poll cycle reflects it. Smaller carriers post resolutions via email-confirmation only; ShippyPro relies on merchant marking them resolved manually. If a resolved claim sits in open more than 24 hours, mark it resolved in the portal. How do I segment lost vs damaged claims? The card pools them. Use ShippyPro’s portal filter to break out, or pair with Failed Deliveries which flags lost-only. Damaged claims need photo evidence within 48 hours of delivery scan; merchants who miss that window lose the claim. Multi-currency claims, how is the count affected? Count is currency-blind, one claim is one. The monetary impact lives in Claim Value (open), which FX-converts at claim creation time using the workspace base currency. A multi-country merchant on euros base will see GBP and CHF claims converted at filing-day rates. Why did my open-claim count drop suddenly? Three usual reasons. (1) Bulk auto-resolution by a carrier (DHL Express runs weekly batches). (2) Manual write-off by your finance team marking aged claims as resolved-not-paid. (3) Connector reconnect sometimes resyncs status from carrier source-of-truth. Check audit log in the portal. Should I file claims for every late shipment? No. Filing has a per-claim labour cost (~10 to 15 minutes for documentation upload) and small-value lates often resolve as on-time on retry; over-filing strains your carrier account-management relationship. Most operators file claims at lost-status threshold (no scan in >7 days) or damage threshold (customer photo evidence). The card reflects what you have filed; under-filing is invisible here, watch Exception Rate for the upstream signal. How does ShippyPro vs direct-carrier claim filing differ? ShippyPro’s claims module submits the claim to the carrier on your behalf and tracks status via a uniform interface; carriers still process claims under their own SLA and rules. The card reads ShippyPro’s view; the carrier’s portal remains source-of-truth for payment release. For high-value claims (>EUR 1000), most operators also escalate via direct carrier account contact. What about EU customs claims (parcels stuck at border)? ShippyPro tracks these under the same open status with a different sub-reason. Customs claims rarely pay out (the carrier did not lose the parcel; customs held it); the merchant typically pays customs duty/delay surcharge instead. These claims clog the queue but do not cost the carrier directly. Read Shipments by Destination for cross-border lane health.

Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

Open Claims is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across ShippyPro 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.