At a glance
Live alert table listing every Alibris order whose dispatch_due_by deadline has passed without a confirm-shipment event. Each row is an SLA breach in progress; the longer it stays, the larger the seller-standing damage and the higher the buyer-complaint risk.
| What it counts | COUNT(orders WHERE dispatch_due_by < NOW() AND dispatch_confirmed_at IS NULL AND status NOT IN ('CANCELLED', 'REFUNDED')). Maintains a row per order with order ID, buyer, ISBN, deadline, hours overdue, listed price. |
| API endpoint + report | Computed locally from the Alibris Inbound Orders feed joined to outbound confirm-shipment events. Recomputes every 4 hours; alert state updated in real time when confirm-shipment event lands. |
| Severity | P1. Each row directly damages Dispatch SLA Compliance, drives seller-standing tier, drives search rank, drives revenue. |
| What it doesn’t count | Cancelled, refunded, vacation/holiday-paused orders. Orders that confirmed shipment 5 minutes ago even if 20 minutes late (closed late-dispatch records). |
| Why separate from Pending Dispatch | Pending Dispatch shows ALL undispatched orders (workload view). This card shows only orders past their deadline (alert view). |
| Fees / commission | Not applicable directly. Indirect: SLA breaches cumulate into seller-standing demotion suppressing search rank. |
| Refunds / cancellations | Cancelling instead of shipping moves to Cancellation Rate, but doesn’t avoid penalty. |
| Currency | Not applicable. |
| Common reasons | (1) Inbound feed lag ate dispatch budget (~24%); (2) Staff absence / sickness (~21%); (3) Stockout deferred (~18%); (4) Confirm-shipment late by feed cadence (~17%); (5) Volume spike absorbed pick capacity (~12%); (6) Other (~8%). |
| Multi-marketplace overlap | Independent per marketplace. Alibris Library Services orders have longer dispatch windows; institutional flag delays the breach trigger. |
| Time window | RT (refreshed every 4 hours minimum). |
| Alert trigger | any order past dispatch_due_by. |
| Roles | owner, operations. |
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your Alibris data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
A US bookseller, 666 orders/month average on Alibris, 2-business-day handling. Snapshot 01 May 26 09:00 UTC.| Order ID | Hours overdue | ISBN | Title | Buyer | Listed price | Risk class |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AL-1234521 | 1.4h | 9780393327748 | Beloved (Norton) | US | $12.20 | Low |
| AL-1234438 | 5.1h | 9780486282114 | Common Sense (Dover) | US | $7.40 | Low |
| AL-1234307 | 9.8h | 9780521296137 | Cambridge academic | UK | $44.00 | Medium (institutional) |
| AL-1234189 | 16.2h | 9780375702709 | Vintage classic | US | $9.80 | Medium |
| AL-1234044 | 28.4h | 9780300100037 | Yale academic | US-LIB | $38.00 | High (institutional) |
| AL-1233897 | 41.0h | 9780198569060 | Oxford rare | DE | $180.00 | High (rare) |
| AL-1233762 | 56.8h | 9780226458045 | Chicago academic | US-LIB | $52.00 | Critical (institutional) |
- The 7 late orders represent 1.05% of monthly volume but disproportionately impact SLA. Each costs ~0.15 percentage points on a 666-order/month seller. SLA at 95% drops to 93.95%.
- Triage by hours-overdue, not by order date. AL-1233762 is 56.8h late and AL-1234521 is 1.4h late; the former needs immediate intervention, the latter just needs to ship today.
- The 3 institutional orders (AL-1234307, AL-1234044, AL-1233762) are P0 institutional risk. Library Services buyers escalate slowly but have long memories; chronic late-dispatch on academic procurement gets you filtered out of library-buyer search.
- The 1 rare-book order (AL-1233897, $180 Oxford) is high reputational impact. Rare-book buyers leave detailed feedback. Ship today with courier upgrade.
- Confirm-shipment-late vs actually-late. Investigation showed AL-1234438 and AL-1234189 actually shipped on time but the confirm-shipment cron only runs daily at 23:00 EST. Move to hourly.
- The $343 of revenue across 7 orders isn’t the headline. Seller-standing damage (search-rank suppression) far exceeds direct revenue exposure. Library Services exclusion if it persists is a much larger downstream loss.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
Late order processing is the active-breach view. Pair with these:| Card | Why pair it with Late Order Processing Queue |
|---|---|
| Dispatch SLA Compliance | The aggregate metric this card feeds into. |
| Pending Dispatch | Leading indicator. |
| Avg Time to Process (hrs) | Distribution view. |
| Inbound Orders File Lag | Cause check; lag eats budget before order seen. |
| Last Successful Upload | Outbound-confirm side. |
| Cancellation Rate | Companion budget. |
| Total Revenue | Downstream impact. |
| AbeBooks Late Order Processing Queue | Peer marketplace. |
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in the Alibris seller dashboard:- Sellers → Manage Orders → filter by Late. Row-level audit; Alibris highlights overdue rows.
- Sellers → Performance Dashboard. Aggregate seller-standing.
| Reason | Direction | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Refresh cadence | Ours every 4h | Alibris real-time; this card lags up to 4 hours. |
| Time zone | Boundary effects | Alibris uses US Pacific Time on .com; connector uses UTC. |
| Outbound-confirm latency | Ours can show late even when Alibris shows shipped | Run cron every 15 minutes. |
| Vacation/holiday handling | Ours can show false breaches | Vacation-day sync requires connector configuration. |
| Cancelled-but-not-yet-acked | Ours can briefly show cancelled rows | Up to 30-minute propagation. |
| Card | Expected relationship | What causes legitimate divergence |
|---|---|---|
abebooks.ab_alert_late_processing | Same fulfilment, different queue. | Each marketplace sets its own dispatch_due_by. |
amazon.amzn_alert_late_processing | Strictest peer. | Amazon’s clock starts at payment; Alibris at confirmation. |
shopify.unfulfilled_orders | Different model. | DTC has no third-party SLA threshold. |