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Card class: HeroCategory: Nerve Centre

At a glance

Late Dispatches Risking Partner Status lists every open order that has passed its committed shipping deadline on Target Plus. Target holds partners to an enterprise-grade on-time dispatch SLA of around 99%, and each late order erodes the rolling SLA the partner scorecard tracks. Because sustained SLA breach is one of the triggers in Target’s partner-status review, this card is your daily worklist for protecting the partner relationship. Clearing these orders quickly is the most direct way to keep your on-time rate above the line.
What it countsThe number of open orders currently past their committed Target Plus shipping deadline.
Sample typeBackend API data from Target Plus, refreshed on the standard data refresh.
Why it mattersEach late order pulls down the rolling on-time SLA, and sustained breach of the ~99% target risks a partner-status review and possible offboarding.
Reading the valueAny value above zero is an action list: dispatch those orders today before they compound the SLA breach.
Currencycount
Time windowRT
Alert triggerany order past shipping_deadline
Sentiment keytgt_alert_dispatch_sla_miss
Rolesowner, operations

Calculation

Vortex IQ reads open Target Plus orders and compares each order’s committed shipping deadline to the current time on every refresh. Any order that is still un-dispatched after its deadline is counted, and the card reports the live total rather than a period average so the worklist always reflects what is overdue right now. Orders drop off the list the moment a tracked dispatch is recorded against them. The count is deliberately a raw number of orders, not a rate, so a single late order is visible and actionable rather than hidden in a percentage. See the worked example below for how the list behaves over a busy weekend.

Worked example

A representative reading of Late Dispatches Risking Partner Status for a typical Target Plus partner. On the morning of 20 Jun 26 an apparel partner opens the card and sees 8 orders past their shipping deadline, all placed late on 18 Jun 26 when a warehouse shift was short-staffed. The operations lead prioritises them, prints labels, and dispatches all 8 before midday. By the next refresh the card reads zero. Had they been left another day, the rolling on-time SLA would have dipped toward the 99% line and risked flipping partner-health-composite-crossed-threshold. Use Vortex Mind to trace whether the late orders cluster around a specific carrier, warehouse, or SKU, and ask Ask Viq “which orders are overdue and how long have they been late?” for a plain-English worklist.

Sibling cards merchants should reference together

CardWhy merchants reach for it
on-time-dispatch-rate-partner-slaThe rolling rate these late orders feed into; check the headline SLA after clearing the list.
late-dispatch-rate-partner-penaltyTranslates late dispatches into the penalty exposure Target applies.
pending-dispatchShows orders awaiting dispatch before they go late, so you can act earlier.
partner-health-composite-crossed-thresholdThe roll-up alert that flips when these late orders push the SLA below the trigger.
target-plus-partner-health-scoreThe graded score that absorbs the SLA impact of repeated late dispatches.

Reconciling against Target Plus Partners

Where to look in the Target Plus Partners portal: Open the order management view and the SLA reports on the Partner scorecard. The portal lists orders by their dispatch deadline and shows which have breached; this card mirrors that worklist in real time so you can clear it without paging through the portal. The scorecard’s rolling on-time rate is where these late orders ultimately register. Why the Vortex IQ value may legitimately differ:
ReasonDirectionWhat to do
Period boundaryVortex IQ counts an order as late the instant the deadline passes; the portal may batch updatesRe-check after the next refresh if a borderline order is in flight.
Time zoneThe shipping deadline is evaluated against the portal’s local timeConfirm the deadline timestamp matches the portal’s displayed cutoff.
Filter scopeVortex IQ counts all open overdue orders; a portal filter may exclude some statusesMatch the portal’s status filter to “open, un-dispatched” before comparing counts.
Cross-connector reconciliation: If late dispatches trace back to stock-outs, reconcile inventory against your BigCommerce admin to confirm the source-of-truth stock matched what Target showed as sellable.

Known limitations / merchant FAQs

Q: How often does this card update? It refreshes on the standard data refresh and is evaluated in real time, so an order appears the moment it passes its deadline and drops off as soon as a dispatch is recorded. Q: Why does the Target Plus Partners number differ from this card? The portal may batch its order-status updates or apply a different status filter, so a borderline order can show on one before the other. The two converge within a refresh cycle. Q: How does this relate to the sibling metrics? This card is the order-level worklist behind the rolling on-time SLA. Clearing it improves on-time-dispatch-rate-partner-sla and reduces the chance of partner-health-composite-crossed-threshold firing. Q: Can I change the alert threshold? The default fires on any order past its shipping deadline. If you want a buffer, for example alerting only when several orders are overdue, adjust it in the Sensitivity tab.

Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

Late Dispatches Risking Partner Status is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across Target Plus 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.