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Card class: HeroCategory: Marketplace

At a glance

Pending Shipment counts orders that buyers have paid for but you have not yet dispatched. On JD this number is not just a to-do list, it is a live risk gauge. Every paid order sits against a JD ship-deadline window, and a backlog that climbs above roughly twice your 30-day average is the clearest leading indicator that fulfilment is bottlenecking and the Logistics DSR is about to take a hit. Chinese buyers expect movement fast, so an unshipped pile turns into late dispatches, then negative Logistics ratings, then lost search ranking. This is a hero card in the Fulfilment family and reads best beside the dispatch-rate, SLA, and late-dispatch cards below.
What it countsThe number of orders that are paid but not yet dispatched at the moment of reading.
Sample typeBackend API data from JD.com, refreshed on the standard data refresh.
Why it mattersA growing backlog is the earliest warning of a fulfilment bottleneck. Left unaddressed it breaches the JD ship-deadline, drags down the Logistics DSR, and demotes listings. Catching the spike while it is still a backlog, before it becomes late dispatches, is the whole point.
Reading the valueRead it against your 30-day average. At or near average is normal; a value above twice the average trips the alert and means dispatch is not keeping pace with intake. Pair with orders-per-day to confirm whether intake spiked or dispatch stalled.
Currencycount
Time windowRT
Alert trigger>2x 30D avg
Sentiment keyjd_pending_ship
Rolesowner, operations

Calculation

A real-time count of orders in the paid-but-not-dispatched state at the moment of reading. The alert compares this live count to the trailing 30-day average backlog: crossing twice that average trips it. Orders move out of the count the instant a dispatch scan is recorded, so the figure falls as you ship. Cancelled-before-dispatch orders drop out without counting as shipped. Both JD Logistics handover-pending and POP self-fulfilled pending orders are included, since both face a ship-deadline.

Worked example

A representative reading of Pending Shipment for a typical merchant on JD.com. Suppose your 30-day average backlog is about 60 orders. This morning the card reads 145, well past the 2x line of 120, and the alert is red. Checking orders-per-day shows a flash promotion doubled intake yesterday, while the dispatch rate held flat, so the backlog is an intake spike the warehouse has not absorbed. The clock matters: several of those orders are within hours of their JD ship-deadline, and missing it would hit the Logistics DSR. The action is immediate, surge dispatch capacity onto the oldest orders first to clear the at-deadline ones, then plan staffing against the next promotion’s expected peak. For deeper investigation, use Vortex Mind to rank pending orders by time-to-deadline; for natural-language exploration, ask Ask Viq “how many pending orders are within four hours of their JD ship-deadline”.

Sibling cards merchants should reference together

CardWhy merchants reach for it
jdc_pop_dispatch_rateFulfilment sibling: the dispatch speed that clears this backlog.
jdc_late_dispatch_dsrFulfilment sibling: the late dispatches a backlog turns into if unaddressed.
jdc_logistics_slaFulfilment sibling: the delivery promise a backlog ultimately threatens.
jdc_orders_per_dayFulfilment sibling: daily intake that explains whether a spike or a stall caused the backlog.
jdc_dsr_thresholdReputation sibling: the DSR threshold a sustained backlog can breach.

Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard

Where to look in JD.com’s own dashboard: JD’s Seller Centre order-management view lists orders by status, and the pending-shipment or to-be-shipped queue is the direct equivalent. The count there should match this card at the same moment, allowing for refresh lag. Why the Vortex IQ value may legitimately differ:
ReasonDirectionWhat to do
Refresh timing. This is a live count; orders shipped between refreshes still show until the next sync.VariableForce a manual refresh for a current-second count.
Status definition. Vortex IQ counts paid-but-undispatched; JD’s queue may include or exclude awaiting-payment or on-hold orders.VariableConfirm which statuses the vendor queue includes.
Fulfilment scope. This card includes both JD Logistics handover-pending and POP pending; JD may split them.VariableSum both queues if the vendor separates them.
Time zone. Deadlines compute in China Standard Time; confirm profile alignment.MarginalConfirm time zone match.
Cross-connector reconciliation: read with orders-per-day to separate an intake spike from a dispatch stall, and with the dispatch-rate card to confirm capacity. For divergence investigations, use Vortex Mind.

Known limitations / merchant FAQs

Q: How often does Pending Shipment update? It is a real-time count, recomputed on every refresh (typically every 30-60 minutes for live integrations). Because it changes as you ship, force a manual refresh during a busy dispatch run for an up-to-the-second figure. Q: Why does my JD.com dashboard show a different number? The usual causes are refresh timing (orders shipped between syncs still show here), the status definition (whether awaiting-payment or on-hold orders are counted), and fulfilment scope (JD Logistics vs POP queues). Match those before assuming a real divergence. Q: The backlog spiked but my team shipped normally. What happened? Almost always an intake spike rather than a dispatch stall. Check orders-per-day: a promotion or festival can double intake overnight, so a steady dispatch rate still leaves a temporary pile. Prioritise the orders closest to their ship-deadline first. Q: Can I customise the alert threshold? Yes, the multiple of the 30-day average (default 2x) is configurable per profile in the Sensitivity tab. Lower it if your ship-deadlines are tight, or raise it for categories with naturally lumpy intake so routine promotion spikes do not over-alert.

Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

Pending Shipment is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across JD.com and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. Nerve Centre runs the detection layer; Vortex Mind investigates the cause when something moves; Ask Viq lets you interrogate any number in plain English. Start for free or book a demo to see this metric running on your own data.