Purchasing & suppliers
On-Time Delivery Rate (OTD)
By the Supply Chain Manager team · Updated October 16, 2026
On-time delivery rate (OTD) is the percentage of orders that arrived on or before the promised date, without checking whether the quantity was complete.
OTD is the timing half of OTIF (on time in full). It is useful on its own for spotting late suppliers, but a supplier can score well on OTD while regularly shipping short, which only OTIF catches.
Agreeing what 'on time' means matters. Some businesses allow a grace window of a day or two; others count any delivery after the expected date as late. Either can work, but the definition must be applied the same way to every supplier, or the comparison is meaningless.
How to calculate on-time delivery rate
OTD % = Orders received on or before expected date ÷ Orders received × 100
On-time delivery rate example
Illustrative numbers: 40 POs received last quarter, 34 on or before the expected date. OTD = 85%. If 6 of those 34 were short-shipped, OTIF would be 70%.
Why on-time delivery rate matters for distributors
It shows which suppliers' dates you can plan on. Trending it weekly shows whether a supplier is slipping before it becomes a stockout.
Common on-time delivery rate mistakes
- Counting the supplier's ship date instead of your receipt date.
- Reporting OTD without OTIF and missing short shipments.
On-time delivery rate in Supply Chain Manager
Supply Chain Manager charts the weekly share of received purchase orders that arrived by their expected date.
Open the live demoExamples on this page use made-up round numbers to show the calculation. They are not benchmarks or results from real businesses.