At a glance
Share of orders despatched in the period whose destination postcode is inside the Australia Post Express Post Next Business Day delivery network. Express Post only guarantees next-business-day delivery between eligible postcodes (the “Next Business Day Network”); a parcel addressed outside that network still travels as Express but loses the guarantee. This card tells you what proportion of your demand can actually be sold the premium guaranteed-speed promise. It drops when Australia Post reclassifies postcodes, which it does in its annual network review (usually published mid-year, effective the following financial year).
Calculation
The card divides the count of orders whose destination postcode sits inside the Australia Post Express Post Next Business Day Network by the total count of domestic orders in the window, then expresses the result as a percentage on a gauge. Eligibility is a property of the from/to postcode pair, not the destination alone. A parcel lodged in a Sydney metro postcode to a Melbourne metro postcode is inside the network; the same Melbourne destination from a remote regional lodgement point may fall outside it. The card resolves the pair using your registered lodgement postcode (the warehouse or store origin held against the connector) and the order’s destination postcode, then queries the Australia Post delivery-estimate response for the guaranteed-network flag. Three points to keep straight:- Eligible is not the same as on time. This card answers “could we have promised next business day”, not “did it arrive next business day”. The arrival question is Express Post Next-Business-Day OTD.
- The denominator is demand, not despatch. An order can be eligible even if you chose to send it Parcel Post. The card measures the addressable opportunity, so a falling number means your customers are moving to postcodes outside the guaranteed network, not that you stopped offering Express.
- Lodgement origin matters. If you move or add a fulfilment site, re-check the registered lodgement postcode on the connector; an out-of-date origin silently shifts the eligibility result for every order.
Worked example
An Australian DTC supplements brand fulfilling from a single warehouse in Mascot, NSW (postcode 2020), around 5,400 domestic orders in the trailing 30 days. Reading taken at 09:00 AEST on 14 Apr 26 for the window 16 Mar 26 to 14 Apr 26.
The card reads 92.1 percent on the gauge. The alert at
<90% is not tripped at the aggregate. Five things to notice:
- The headline is healthy but the tail is where the money leaks. Metro is effectively fully covered. The aggregate is dragged down almost entirely by the regional and remote groupings. If your marketing is pushing regional acquisition, expect this number to fall even though nothing about Australia Post changed.
- Watch the
vsParrow, not just the absolute. A move from 93.4 percent last period to 92.1 percent this period is a 1.3-point erosion. On 5,400 orders that is roughly 70 more orders per month that can no longer be offered a guaranteed promise. Pair with Parcel Post vs Express vs Standard Mix to see whether your service-mix revenue follows. - The October review is the structural risk, not daily noise. Australia Post’s annual review can pull postcodes out of the Next Business Day Network. A 2-to-4 point step-down dated to the review cutover is a list change, not a demand change. The card annotates the network version date so you can tell them apart.
- Perth at 90.0 percent is the swing region. Eastern-seaboard metro is stable; WA and SA sit closer to the network edge and are the first to move when the list is revised. If you sell heavily into WA, this is the grouping to watch.
- Eligibility sets the ceiling for the guaranteed-OTD card. You cannot deliver next-business-day OTD on parcels that were never eligible. When Express Post Next-Business-Day OTD dips, check this card first: a falling eligibility rate mechanically pulls measured OTD down even when the network is performing normally.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
Eligibility is the addressable-opportunity metric. Pair it with these to turn coverage into a despatch and pricing decision:Reconciling against the source
Where to look in Australia Post’s own tooling: The authoritative source is the Australia Post Express Post Next Business Day Guarantee coverage, published on the Australia Post Express Post page and exposed programmatically through the Shipping & Tracking API delivery-estimate / Postage Assessment Calculator response (the guaranteed-network flag on a from/to postcode pair). For account holders, the MyPost Business and Australia Post Merchant Portal quote tools will show whether a given lodgement-to-destination pair is inside the guaranteed network at quote time. The closest like-for-like check is to run a handful of your highest-volume from/to postcode pairs through the AusPost delivery-estimate tool and confirm the guaranteed-network flag matches how this card classified them. Why our number may legitimately differ from Australia Post’s tooling:
Cross-connector reconciliation:
Known limitations / merchant FAQs
My eligibility dropped 3 points overnight and nothing changed in my catalogue. What happened? Almost always one of two things. (1) Australia Post published a network revision; check the card’s annotated list version date against the Express Post coverage page. (2) Your registered lodgement postcode changed (a 3PL move, a connector reconfiguration), which re-classifies every from/to pair. Rule out the lodgement origin first, then attribute the rest to the list revision. Does an ineligible parcel still get sent Express Post? Yes. If you select Express Post for a destination outside the guaranteed network, Australia Post still carries it as Express and prices it as Express; it simply travels without the next-business-day guarantee. That is exactly why this card matters: you can be charging and promising premium speed on parcels that carry no guarantee, which is where refund disputes start. Why is this measured on orders, not on shipments? Because it is an addressable-opportunity metric. It answers “what share of my demand can be sold a guaranteed promise”, which is a checkout and pricing question, not a despatch question. Whether you actually chose Express for a given order is captured by Parcel Post vs Express vs Standard Mix. We fulfil from two warehouses. Which lodgement origin does the card use? The registered lodgement postcode held against the connector. If you split despatch across sites with materially different network footprints (for example a Sydney and a Perth DC), a single origin assumption will misclassify the lanes served by the other site. Raise it with your implementation contact so the connector can be configured per origin. Is international covered here? No. Express Post is a domestic guaranteed-speed product. The cross-border speed-promise question is International Customs Clearance Rate (<5d), and international destination spread is on International Destinations, Top 10. What is a healthy number? For a metro-skewed eastern-seaboard merchant, 95 to 99 percent is normal. A regional or WA-heavy customer base will sit lower simply because more destinations are outside the network; 90 to 95 percent is fine there. The alert at<90% is the point at which more than one order in ten cannot be sold the guarantee, which is worth a carrier-mix conversation rather than an alarm.