Warranty Tracking for Product Brands: What to Track, Metrics and Tools

Last updated: October 21, 2026

Ask a product brand how many units it sold last year and you get a number in seconds. Ask how many of those units are still under warranty, which warranties end next month, or what claims cost per product line, and the answer usually involves a week of spreadsheet work. That gap is what warranty tracking closes. This guide covers what to record for every product, when a spreadsheet stops being enough, the metrics worth reporting, and how to turn expiring warranties into revenue instead of support tickets.

What Is Warranty Tracking?

Warranty tracking is the practice of recording each product's warranty from the moment it starts until coverage ends: who owns the product, its serial number, when coverage began and ends, and every claim made against it.

The term means two different things depending on who is searching:

• For consumers, a warranty tracker is a place to keep receipts and end dates so they know whether a broken dishwasher is still covered. Most people use an email folder, a notes app or a warranty tracker app.
• For brands and manufacturers, warranty tracking is a business system. It decides whether a claim is valid, how much to set aside for future repairs, which products fail, and who to contact before coverage runs out.

This guide is about the second meaning. If you are a consumer, the shortcut is simple: register your product with the brand. The brand then keeps the purchase date and coverage for you.

Why Warranty Tracking Matters More Than It Looks

Warranty is not a small line item. In 2025, US-based manufacturers paid $30.37 billion in warranty claims, and the average claims rate was 1.30% of product sales, according to Warranty Week's 2026 annual product warranty report. For a brand with $40 million in product revenue, the average rate works out to about $520,000 a year.

Most of that cost is fixed by the time a claim arrives. The product was built, shipped and sold. What brands can still control is everything around the claim:

• Paying for claims that should not be paid, because nobody can confirm the purchase date or whether the serial number was already claimed.
• Slow, expensive handling, because the agent has to ask for a receipt, a serial number and photos before they can even start.
• Repeat failures nobody spots, because claims sit in a support inbox instead of being counted per product and reason.
• Missed revenue, because owners whose warranty is about to end never hear from the brand.

Each of these is a tracking problem before it is a claims problem.

The Retail Gap: Why Brands Lose Track

Brands that sell direct have an order record for every buyer. Brands that sell through retailers do not. The product leaves a distributor's warehouse, sits on a shelf, and is bought by someone the brand never sees. Until that buyer registers the product or files a claim, the brand has no record that the warranty exists at all.

This is why warranty tracking for retail brands starts with product registration. A registration is the first moment the brand learns who owns the product, when it was bought, and when coverage started. A QR code on the product or packaging that opens a registration page on the owner's phone makes that moment far more likely to happen than a paper card in the box (our warranty registration guide covers the details). If you want the code to carry the product's GTIN and serial number, our free GS1 Digital Link generator shows how that works.

What to Track for Every Product

A useful warranty record answers three questions: is this product covered, who owns it, and what has happened to it so far. These are the fields that answer them.

Two practical notes. First, record the end date as a date, not as "2 years". End dates drive reminders, reports and claim decisions, and calculating them on the fly is where spreadsheets break. Second, keep proof of purchase attached to the product record rather than in an email thread. A claim agent should see it in one click.

Tracking Warranty Claims From First Contact to Resolution

The claim side of warranty tracking is where most of the cost sits. For each claim, track:

• Reason, chosen from a fixed list with optional sub-reasons, so you can count them. Free text is unreadable at scale.
• Status, from new to waiting on the customer to resolved or denied.
• Owner on your team, so no claim sits unassigned.
• Time to first reply and time to resolve, the two numbers customers feel most.
• Outcome and cost: repair, replacement, refund or denial, and what it cost in parts, labor and shipping.

Before the claim form, it pays to offer self-help. Many "broken" products are setup or usage problems that a help article or a troubleshooting step fixes in minutes. A claim that never needs to be filed is the cheapest one to track. For the full claim workflow, see our page on warranty claims management.

Spreadsheet vs Warranty Tracking Software

Spreadsheets are where most warranty tracking starts, and for a small catalog they are fine. The question is when they stop working.

A rough rule: once registrations arrive daily, or claims arrive weekly, or more than one person handles claims, move to software. The cost of one mistaken claim approval or one missed renewal campaign usually exceeds a year of software fees, and a clean record is also your best defense against warranty fraud. Our guide to the best warranty management software compares nine tools by use case, pricing and setup time.

Warranty Tracking Metrics Worth Reporting

Track fewer numbers, but look at them every month. These are the ones that lead to decisions.

Coverage and reach

• Registration rate: registered units divided by units sold. This tells you how much of your installed base you can actually see.
• Active warranties: products currently under coverage.
• Warranties ending in the next 30 and 90 days: your pipeline for extended warranty offers and pre-expiry check-ins.

Claims

• Claims volume, overall and per product.
• Claims rate: claims paid as a share of product revenue, the same measure Warranty Week uses, so you can compare against your industry.
• Approval rate: approved claims as a share of decided claims. A sudden change usually means a product problem or a policy problem.
• Claims by reason: the clearest signal for your product and quality teams.

Service

• Time to first reply and time to resolve.
• Overdue claims: claims with no reply within your target, for example 48 hours.

Cost

• Cost per claim and total claim cost per period, ideally broken down by product.

If you only pick three, choose registration rate, claims by product and reason, and warranties ending soon. The first tells you how much you can see, the second tells you what to fix, and the third tells you who to talk to next.

Turn Expiring Warranties Into Revenue

Most brands treat the end of a warranty as nothing at all. It is actually one of the best moments to contact an owner. They have used the product for a year or two, they rely on it, and they are about to lose their cover.

A tracked end date makes two things possible:

1. An extended warranty offer a few weeks before coverage ends, sent only to owners who agreed to marketing emails.
2. A check-in before expiry, asking whether everything works. Owners who report a problem while still covered become a fair claim instead of an angry review later.

Our guide on how to sell extended warranties covers timing, pricing and the legal basics in detail.

How Veribl Tracks Warranties

Veribl is a product experience platform. Each product gets a page that owners open by scanning a QR code, where they get setup help, ask an AI assistant questions, and register their product. Warranty tracking is built on that registration. Here is what it records and shows:

• Registrations with the full warranty record. Each registration includes the owner, product, serial number, purchase date and place, proof of purchase, and the warranty end date. You can search by serial number or warranty code and export everything as a CSV.
• Warranty plans per product. Set coverage length, terms and exclusions per product, per product family or for all products, including extended plans you sell.
• A claims workspace. Claims arrive with proof of purchase, photos and warranty status attached. Your team can assign claims, reply, and see which ones need a reply, are unassigned, or are overdue with no first reply within 48 hours.
• Help before the claim form. With "Try to fix it first" turned on, owners see the product's help articles and the AI assistant before they can file a claim.
• Claims from owners who never registered. You can let them file by adding proof of purchase, which registers the product at the same time.
• A warranty overview. It shows registrations, claims, approval rate, time to first reply, time to resolve and claim costs over the period you choose, plus claims by product and the reasons customers give.
• Warranties ending soon. The overview lists active warranties and those ending in the next 30 days. In Flows, a customer journey can start when a warranty is about to end and send an extended warranty offer or a check-in.

The free plan includes up to 250 registered owners, with registration, warranty certificates and the claims workspace. Paid Owners plans start at $49 a month for 2,500 owners or $129 a month for 10,000. See warranty management for how it fits together.

Getting Started: A 30-Day Plan

1. Week 1: Agree on the record. Use the field list above. Decide the warranty length per product and write down what is excluded.
2. Week 2: Make registration easy. Put a QR code on the product or packaging that opens a registration page. Collect proof of purchase at registration, not at claim time.
3. Week 3: Move claims into one place. Fix the list of claim reasons, set a first-reply target, and give every claim an owner.
4. Week 4: Report and act. Look at claims by product and reason, then set up one message for owners whose warranty ends in the next 30 days.

After a month you will know how much of your installed base you can see, what fails, and who to talk to next. That is most of what warranty tracking is for.

Veribl helps product brands register owners, track warranties and handle claims after the sale. Start free or book a demo.