Summary
Shipment EDD is the delivery date for an order that already exists, updated as the parcel moves through the delivery journey. Checkout EDD answers “when will it arrive if I buy now?”; Shipment EDD answers “when will it arrive now?” and changes the answer when the network does, on the surfaces Post-Purchase owns: the Shipment Overview your customer service team reads, the notifications a shopper receives and the Tracking Page.Who it’s for
Customer service and operations teams who want shoppers to know the expected delivery date before they ask, and to hear about a delay from the brand rather than discovering it. It also serves e-commerce and CX teams who want the date in the order confirmation to match the date shown at checkout.Key benefits
- The question is answered before it is asked. A date in the order confirmation and on the Tracking Page from the start reduces “where is my order” contacts.
- The brand speaks first when a parcel runs late or early. The date updates as the network moves, and notifications can carry the update.
- Support reads the same date the shopper sees. The same date appears in Shipment Overview, in notifications and on the Tracking Page.
- The checkout promise is carried forward. Passing the checkout reference at shipment creation ties the date shown at checkout to the shipment, so the confirmation email and the Tracking Page do not show a different date minutes later.
- Every shipment carries a date. Where a lane has too little volume to predict, the source priority falls through to a nominated source or to a default you supply.
How it works
Where the date comes from
Several estimated delivery dates can exist for one shipment.
Your own EDD fields accept
YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss (stored as UTC) or a value with an offset such as 2021-01-15T10:35:55+08:00.
Where the date starts
- For brands running Checkout EDD too, the date exists from order confirmation, provided the
checkout_idreturned by the widget or the API is passed inadditional_infowhen the shipment is created. - For brands running Shipment EDD alone, the date starts at carrier pick-up confirmation.
Source priority and fallbacks
The sources are ranked, and the shipment displays the date from the highest-priority source that has one. The usual pattern is to start on the Perform.AI prediction and hand over to the carrier’s date when it arrives, because carrier dates land later in the journey and are reliable on some lanes. Which carriers those are depends on your lanes and services and is assessed per brand rather than from a standing list.- Priority is configured at Tracking Page scope. Where one Tracking Page covers several carriers, for example one page per country, the source cannot be differentiated per carrier within that scope.
- Where a lane has insufficient volume to predict, the priority chain falls through to a nominated source or to a default value you provide.
Where the date appears
Buffer and accuracy
A buffer exists between the predicted date and the expected delivery. A larger buffer makes the date more conservative and produces more early deliveries; a smaller one makes it more aggressive and increases the likelihood of late deliveries. For shipment use cases the recommended default is conservative, which is the opposite of the instinct at checkout, where a nearer date wins the order. The trade-off is agreed with you and configured by Perform.AI. Accuracy is measured against the first delivery attempt using two definitions:- Non-late accuracy counts a prediction as accurate if the shipment is delivered, or has its first delivery attempt, on or before the predicted date.
- Adjusted non-late accuracy counts it as accurate only if the shipment arrives on the predicted date or shortly before it, because arriving much earlier than promised is also a broken promise to a shopper who planned around the date.
Brands new to Post-Purchase
For brands not yet onboarded to Post-Purchase, the model starts trained on data from other customers and is refined once your own data accumulates. Shopper-facing display in notifications and on the Tracking Page stays off until the setup is validated, so the timeline for shopper-visible dates is longer than for an existing Post-Purchase customer.Set up in the portal
- To include the date in notifications, add the expected delivery placeholders to your notification templates. See Delivery Notifications.
- To show or hide the date on the Tracking Page and set the priority between sources, contact your account team. See Tracking Page.
Use via API and MCP
- Retrieve the displayed date for a shipment with Retrieve shipment details or the v5.2 variant; the guide is Retrieve a shipment.
- Receive updates as they happen through webhooks. The
expected_deliveryobject is carried in format 5.2 as a single window and in format 5.3 separated by source (merchant,carrier,predict_engineanddisplay, wheredisplayfollows your account’s EDD display priority). - MCP:
get_shipment_detailsreturns the shipment including its expected delivery. Documented on MCP tools.
FAQ
Our carrier already sends tracking updates. What does Shipment EDD add?
The carrier sends its own date, on its own page, per carrier, from collection onwards. Shipment EDD is one date across every carrier, on your own surfaces, from the order onwards where you also run Checkout EDD.Why does the date in the confirmation email differ from the one shown at checkout?
The checkout reference was not passed at shipment creation. Send thecheckout_id in additional_info when you create the shipment so the same date is carried forward.