How Tracking Analytics Figures Are Calculated

Introduction

This article explains where each number in Tracking Analytics comes from.

Read it if a figure looks wrong, or before you make a decision based on one.

Which shipments count

Two things decide which shipments are included in a number.

The report filters. Every number uses only the shipments that match the date range, couriers, origin and destination you chose.

Whether the shipment is pending. A pending shipment has no tracking data, so it has not had the chance to succeed or fail yet.

Because of this, rates that measure success or failure ignore pending shipments completely. If they did not, every rate would drop each time you added new shipments.

So Total Shipments counts everything. Delivery Rate, Resolution Rate and the exception rate count only non-pending shipments.

Overview figures

Figure	How it is calculated
Total Shipments	All shipments created during the period
Pending	Pending shipments, divided by all shipments
Delivery Rate	Delivered shipments, divided by non-pending shipments
Resolution Rate	Shipments that finished, either delivered or returned, divided by non-pending shipments
Active (excl. pending)	Shipments that are not pending, delivered or exception
Median Transit Time	The middle delivery time of your delivered shipments
EDD (On-time or Early)	Looks only at shipments that had an estimated date and were delivered. Shows how many arrived by that date, or up to one day after

Daily Shipment Volume shows a shipment count and an exception count for each day. Days with no shipments show as zero, so the chart has no gaps. The seven-day average covers each day plus the six days before it.

The seven-day comparison needs a range of at least 14 days. With a shorter range it stays empty, because there is nothing to compare.

Courier figures and star ratings

Courier percentages are based on that courier's own shipments, not on your total.

The star rating combines four things:

Part	Weight	What it measures
Delivery rate	40%	How many shipments were delivered
Reliability	25%	Fewer exceptions and fewer failed attempts
Speed	20%	How the courier compares with the other couriers in the same report
Estimate accuracy	15%	How often the courier met its own estimated date

The stars are the score out of five, rounded to the nearest half star.

Speed is a comparison, so a star rating only works inside one report. In any report, the fastest courier gets full marks for speed and the slowest gets zero, whatever their real delivery times. If you change the date range, the same courier can get a different rating. Do not compare star ratings between two reports.

A courier that gives no estimated dates gets a slightly below average score for that part, not zero. This is deliberate. A courier that gives estimates and misses them should score worse than a courier that gives none at all.

Couriers with fewer than 100 shipments in the period are not included on the Couriers tab.

Delivery speed figures

All speed figures use delivered shipments only. A shipment that is still moving has no delivery time yet.

Delivery time is measured from the first tracking scan until the parcel is marked as delivered.

Figure	What it means
Average	The average of all delivery times
Most Common (median)	The middle value. A few very slow shipments affect it less than they affect the average
Fastest 10%	One shipment in ten arrived this quickly, or quicker
Slowest 10%	One shipment in ten took this long, or longer

The first chart groups shipments by how many days they took. The second chart groups the same shipments into four ranges: under 2 days, 2 to 5 days, 5 to 10 days, and over 10 days.

Exception figures

An exception is a shipment that ended with a problem: returned to sender, lost, or undeliverable for another reason.

Figure	How it is calculated
Overall Exception Rate	Exceptions, divided by non-pending shipments
Affected shipments	The number of exceptions
Exception Rate Over Time	For each day, that day's exceptions divided by that day's shipments
Fewest and most exceptions	The couriers with the lowest and the highest exception rates

An exception is not always the courier's fault. A refused delivery, a wrong address or a customs rejection all count as exceptions.

Numbers that look wrong but are not

The courier shipment numbers add up to more than Total Shipments. When two couriers handle the same shipment, it counts for both, because both handled it. So adding up the courier column gives a higher number than your shipment total. This is expected. The two numbers are not meant to match.

Active Shipments by Status does not match the Active figure. The chart shows each status as a percentage of the chart's own total. That is why the percentages add up to 100 but do not match the number in the card.

EDD on-time allows one extra day. A shipment counts as on time if it arrives by the estimated date, or up to one day after it.

The 10% figures are very close, not exact. They are calculated in a way that stays fast with large numbers of shipments. If you work them out by hand you may get a slightly different result.

A dash is not a zero. A dash or an empty cell means there was nothing to measure. Zero means there was something to measure and the answer was zero. A courier that gave no estimated dates shows a dash in the EDD column, not 0%.

An empty report is not always a fault. Analytics covers the last six months. If you choose an earlier period, the report will be empty because there is no data for it.

Next steps

To learn what each shipment status means, see understanding shipment delivery statuses.

Updated on: 15/09/2026

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