How to report on-time delivery when work is still open

01

Define the due-date cohort

Choose the agreed delivery event, due date, reporting period and unit of work. Include every eligible item due in that period, even if it remains unfinished at the review cutoff. Record the original commitment, approved changes, completion time and status. Decide in advance how cancellations and items without a valid due date will be handled; show them separately rather than silently deleting them.

Use the same time zone and clock for promised and actual delivery. A completed-item lead-time report answers a different question: how long finished work took from request to delivery. Keep it alongside this due-date view, with its own count and definitions.

02

Calculate and reconcile the status counts

Hypothetical example: 100 eligible orders were due in March. At a review cutoff after March 31, 78 were delivered on or before their agreed due date, 12 were delivered late and 10 were still open after their due date. The on-time rate is 78 divided by 100, or 78%. The 22 not delivered on time comprise the 12 late completions and 10 open orders; they are not two separate sets to add again.

If a report divides 78 on-time orders by the 90 completed orders, it produces about 86.7%. That describes the share of completed orders delivered on time, but excludes the 10 still open. Label both measures if both are useful, and put the underlying counts beside them.

03

Handle changed commitments and uncertain records

If a customer and business agree to move a date, preserve both the original and revised commitment, who approved it and when. Decide which date governs the headline measure. If the revised date governs, an order moved from March to April belongs in the April due-date cohort; an original-date view keeps it in March. Label the two views and never add them together as separate orders. Replacing a missed date without an audit trail can make the result appear better than the customer's experience.

If a completion timestamp is missing, investigate the source record. Until it is resolved, keep the item in the eligible cohort as unknown and report the count. The verified on-time count divided by all eligible items is a lower bound until the unknown cases are resolved. If your policy excludes cancellations, report the excluded count and use the remaining eligible total as the denominator. An item that was not yet due at the cutoff belongs in a future cohort; an item due before the cutoff and still open remains visible in the due-period cohort.

04

Use the report to recover work

Assign an owner, next action and review date to each open late item. Separate internal capacity delays from time awaiting a customer, supplier or decision, while retaining total elapsed age. Check whether the same step or work type appears repeatedly before changing staffing or priorities.

Review the same cohort again after open work closes. Preserve the original snapshot so the team can see what was known at the time. Compare periods using consistent eligibility and due-date rules, and review quality or rework alongside speed.

05

Freeze and reconcile the cohort

At the reporting cutoff, freeze the list of items due in the period and their original or agreed revised due dates. Add separate statuses for on-time completion, late completion, still open and unknown. Reconcile those counts to the eligible total before publishing a percentage, then retain the snapshot so later completions do not rewrite what was known.