At a glance
Live £ exposure across every order currently sitting in a buyer-dispute or unresolved case, plus orders held in funds-on-hold by eBay. The “what could walk out the door if I don’t act today” number. Includes INR cases, “Item Not as Described” returns awaiting decision, open chargebacks, and held-payouts on disputed transactions.
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your eBay 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 UK home-and-garden seller running ebay.co.uk + ebay.com. Snapshot taken 28 Apr 26, 14:00 BST.
Five things to notice:
- The headline number mixes currencies. Without FX conversion, the £1,462 figure has ) is roughly £1,865; for finance reporting, do the FX manually.
- The £612 funds-on-hold is recoverable, not lost. eBay places funds on hold when a new SKU shows velocity that pattern-matches fraud (e.g. sudden burst of high-value sales of an item the seller has never sold before). The hold typically clears in 7 to 14 days once the orders complete delivery without disputes; this isn’t a permanent loss, it’s a cash-flow event.
- The 6 open INR cases are the most actionable category. Each unresolved INR auto-decides against the seller after 8 days. Resolving them within the response window (post tracking, message buyer) closes 80% of cases favourably and removes the £482 from this card.
- The “Item Not as Described” cases are the hardest. Buyer has already escalated; eBay reviews the listing description vs the buyer complaint. Seller win-rate is roughly 40% if the listing description was accurate and there are buyer photos showing the issue. Otherwise the seller usually loses.
- Multi-site exposure should be acted on per-site. UK exposure (£1,462 in this snapshot) is mostly INR + funds-on-hold; US exposure ($510) is split between INR and chargebacks. Different action paths: UK = upload tracking + respond to messages; US = work the chargeback evidence with the payment processor.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in eBay Seller Hub: eBay does not publish a single “Revenue at Risk” tile, this is a Vortex IQ composite. The closest native views to reconcile its components against:Seller Hub → Orders → Cases, list of open cases and their order values. Seller Hub → Payments → Funds on Hold, eBay-initiated funds holds. Seller Hub → Payments → Disputes, chargebacks routed through the eBay-managed payments system.Sum the order values across the three views and the total should match this card to within a few percent (some sub-2-minute refresh latency). Timing, settlement, and reporting-lag table:
Why our number may legitimately differ from a manual sum across Seller Hub:
Cross-connector reconciliation against other connectors the same seller may run:
Known limitations / merchant FAQs
What’s included in “Revenue at Risk”? Four categories: (1) open INR cases (any age), (2) open “Item Not as Described” returns awaiting eBay review, (3) open chargebacks routed via the payments system, (4) eBay-initiated funds-on-hold (typically for new SKUs / new sellers / fraud-pattern sweeps). The card YAML lets each workspace toggle category 4 on or off; default includes it. Why is the funds-on-hold so high for me as a new seller? eBay’s funds-on-hold for new accounts is a fraud-prevention tool. New sellers (under 90 days, or under 25 transactions) face a 7 to 21 day hold per order until eBay sees clean delivery, no buyer disputes, and consistent good behaviour. The hold typically falls to near-zero once the seller crosses the 25-transaction threshold and maintains positive seller-standards. This is recoverable cash, not lost. Is this number net of fees? No, gross. It represents the full customer-paid order value of every at-risk order. If the buyer wins, the seller loses the full order value; if the seller wins, they keep it (and pay the standard FVF). Promoted ad spend on at-risk orders is non-refundable regardless of outcome, so the real exposure is slightly higher than the headline for promoted-driven sales. My multi-site exposure: how do I read the headline? The card sums values without FX. A UK + US seller sees £X + $Y rendered as a single £-labelled number that’s arithmetically muddled. Use the per-marketplace breakdown when the card is expanded; for board-level reporting, do the FX manually using your accounting rate. How does Best Offer affect this? Best-Offer-resolved orders show at the negotiated total (the agreed price, not the asking price). Sellers running aggressive auto-accept rules sometimes see Best-Offer orders disputed at higher rates because the buyer feels they could have negotiated lower; this is rare but worth watching. What’s the typical resolution rate by category? Industry-rough rates: INR cases ~80% close favourably for the seller if tracking is uploaded promptly. “Item Not as Described” ~40 to 50% favourable to seller with strong listing photos / accurate descriptions. Chargebacks ~60 to 70% favourable to seller for delivered orders with tracking. Funds-on-hold ~99% release after the orders complete delivery without disputes (it’s not a dispute; it’s a precaution). Why does the alert trigger at>$0?
Because zero exposure is the only safe number. Any open case or held fund represents an asset under threat, the card forces visibility. Sellers who tune it up to “$X threshold” tend to ignore small but cumulative exposures that erode TRS-eligibility.
Why doesn’t this match Shopify’s “in-dispute” figure?
Independent populations. Shopify orders are not eBay orders. The Shopify equivalent (chargebacks via Stripe / PayPal) is a different system with different SLAs. For a seller running both, the combined at-risk number is the sum of this card and Shopify’s dispute view; don’t try to reconcile.
Is there a “today” volatility issue?
Less than for revenue cards. Cases open and close throughout the day; if you watch the card live during a buyer-dispute spike, you’ll see it tick up by the order value of each new case. The figure stabilises overnight (eBay’s automated case-resolution runs at 00:00 PT, processing cases that hit the 8-day mark).
Action playbook when this card alerts:
- Sort the at-risk orders by order value, descending. Resolve the largest-value cases first; defect-rate cost is per-order, but cash impact is per-£.
- For INR cases: paste tracking, message the buyer, refund proactively if delivered-but-disputed.
- For “Item Not as Described”: review the listing description vs the buyer complaint; if accurate, fight the case with photos; if mismatch, refund proactively.
- For chargebacks: respond to the payment processor with proof-of-delivery + tracking. eBay-managed payments handles this for you.
- For funds-on-hold (new seller): wait it out; it’s not actionable until the holding-criteria thresholds are met.