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.
| What it counts | SUM(pricingSummary.total.value) WHERE order has at least one open case OR funds_on_hold = true OR chargeback_status = OPEN. Real-time snapshot. |
| Listing-format scope | All formats. Auctions, fixed-price, and Best-Offer-resolved orders all contribute when their orders are in dispute. |
| GMV / fees framing | Gross of FVF and Promoted ad fees. A £100 order at risk represents £100 of GMV exposure; if the buyer wins, the seller loses the gross order value plus the FVF (which eBay refunds in most case outcomes) plus the Promoted ad fee (non-refundable) plus any shipping cost the seller already paid the carrier. |
| Promoted Listings | Promoted ad spend on the at-risk order is not refundable even if the buyer wins, so the true exposure is slightly higher than this card shows for promoted-driven orders. |
| Multi-site aggregation | Each connected marketplaceId contributes its own at-risk total in the order’s native currency. The card sums across currencies without FX conversion, multi-site sellers should treat the headline as approximate and use per-site filtering for accuracy. |
| Currency | Per-order currency from pricingSummary.total.currency. Summed without FX. |
| Best-Offer-resolved orders | Counted at the negotiated total (the agreed price), not the original asking price. |
| Refunds | A seller-issued refund closing the case favourably removes the order from this card immediately. An auto-resolved-against-seller case keeps the order on the card until eBay finalises the refund (typically same day). |
| Cancellations | Disputed cancellations (buyer claims they didn’t cancel, or seller cancelled and buyer disputes) appear here at the order value. |
| Time window | RT (real-time, snapshot at last refresh, updates within 30 to 90 seconds of any case state change). |
| Alert trigger | >$0 (any non-zero exposure triggers the card amber). The Vortex IQ Nerve Centre is engineered to make this number visible the moment it crosses zero. |
| Roles | owner, finance, marketing |
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.| Risk source | Order count | Order value | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open INR cases (UK) | 6 | £482 | 1 case past day-5 threshold |
| Open INR cases (US) | 3 | $324 | All within day-5 |
| ”Item Not as Described” returns awaiting decision (UK) | 4 | £368 | Buyer escalated, awaiting eBay review |
| Open chargebacks (US, via Stripe processor) | 2 | $186 | High win-rate for sellers if tracking proves delivery |
| Funds-on-hold (eBay-initiated, UK) | 8 | £612 | New SKU triggered fraud-detection sweep |
| Total Revenue at Risk | 23 orders | £1,462 + $510 | Headline shown as £1,462 + 510 (no FX) |
- 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
| Card | Why pair it with Revenue at Risk |
|---|---|
| Open INR Cases | The count view of one of the contributors. Use both: this card for £-prioritisation, that card for the SLA clock. |
| Cases without Resolution | Tracks the cases that already auto-resolved against you. Yesterday’s “at risk” becomes today’s “lost”. |
| Pending Payouts | Funds-on-hold contribution. Often the largest single component of “at risk” for new SKUs / new sellers. |
| Defect Rate | The downstream consequence; auto-resolved cases convert into defects. |
| Total Revenue | Risk as a percentage of GMV. £2k at risk on £200k of monthly GMV is 1%; on £20k it’s 10%. Context matters. |
| Health Score | Composite that captures the operational health driving this card up or down. |
| Shopify Total Revenue | Channel-concentration context; if eBay risk spikes, can the Shopify storefront absorb the volume? |
| Amazon A-to-z Claims | Marketplace peer; the Amazon equivalent dispute mechanism. |
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:
| Topic | Detail |
|---|---|
| Timezone | Order timestamps are UTC in the API; Seller Hub displays in account timezone (Pacific Time for US accounts). The “at risk” calculation uses the order’s case state at the time of refresh, not at the original order placement, so timezone doesn’t affect the figure. |
| Settlement / payout impact | The funds-on-hold component is literally the cash eBay is withholding. New sellers face a 1 to 21 day hold per order until they hit volume / standing thresholds; TRS sellers see near-zero funds-on-hold under normal operations. |
| Promoted Listings cost reporting lag | Not directly relevant. Promoted ad fees are deducted at the order level regardless of dispute outcome; if the buyer wins the case, the FVF is refunded but the ad fee is not. |
| API throttling | The Cases API is webhook-driven (30 to 90 second push latency). The Funds-on-Hold endpoint has a 15-minute polling cadence; the chargeback / dispute feed is event-driven. |
| Refresh cadence | Composite recomputes within 90 seconds of any underlying change; the figure is effectively real-time. |
| Reason | Direction | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Currency mixing | Either | Vortex IQ sums values without FX; Seller Hub shows each currency in its native column. Multi-site sellers see arithmetic differences when they manually sum across columns vs trust the headline. |
| Component definition | Either | Vortex IQ’s “Revenue at Risk” includes funds-on-hold; some merchants want the strict “in-dispute” view (excluding holds). The card YAML supports both definitions; the default includes holds. |
| Refresh lag | Ours within 90s | A buyer-opened case may briefly appear in Seller Hub before our webhook fires. Sub-2-minute discrepancies are normal. |
| Card | Expected relationship | What causes legitimate divergence |
|---|---|---|
amazon.atoz_claims | Marketplace peer. Amazon’s A-to-z claim count is conceptually equivalent to eBay’s open-cases count. Different SLA, different fee implications. | Independent populations. A seller with high eBay at-risk but low Amazon claims usually has eBay-specific dispatch / tracking-upload issues. |
stripe.stripe_disputes | Cross-connector reconciliation possible for sellers using Stripe for off-eBay payments. eBay-managed payments (the default for most sellers since 2021) bypass external Stripe; only sellers on legacy direct-Stripe routing see eBay disputes here. | If using eBay-managed payments, Stripe sees zero of these disputes. |
shopify.total_revenue | Channel-concentration context only. | Not a reconciliation. |
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.