Manage dispatch lead days as an Operator – Marketplacer

Dispatch lead days let operators add extra preparation time on top of the base SLA dispatch threshold for products that need longer fulfilment, such as made-to-order, custom, or bulky goods.

Enable dispatch lead days

Dispatch lead days must be enabled by Marketplacer for your marketplace before it can be turned on. Once available, an operator activates it:

Sign in to the Operator portal.
Go to Configuration > Seller Settings.
Go to the Seller Service Level Agreement (SLA) settings section.
Check the Enable dispatch lead days box. This option only appears once Marketplacer has switched on the capability for your marketplace.

Notes:

Your marketplace also needs a Days to fulfil order value set. Without one, no deadlines are calculated at all, and dispatch lead days have no effect.
This is an all-or-nothing setting. Leaving it off hides the field from the Seller Portal, drops it from the CSV template, and makes it unavailable through the API — sellers cannot be given access individually.

How dispatch lead days affect the effective SLA

The effective SLA is calculated as:

Effective SLA = base threshold + dispatch lead days

Base threshold comes from one of two levels:

The individual seller's SLA setting, if one is configured.
The marketplace SLA setting, if the seller has no individual SLA.

Dispatch lead days come from one of three levels, in this order:

The variant, if lead days are set there. Sellers set this level.
The advert, if not set on the variant. Sellers set this level.
The taxon (category), if not set on the variant or advert. Operators set this level.

There is no seller-level or marketplace-level dispatch lead days setting. If no lead days are set at any level, the effective SLA equals the base threshold.

Note: Dispatch lead days are added on top of the base threshold, not used to replace it.

Set dispatch lead days on a taxon

Sign in to the Operator portal.
Go to Categorisation > Categories.
Search for the category by name, or navigate to it in the table.
Click the edit icon next to the category.
Set the number of days in the Dispatch lead days field. (Optional. Leave blank to fall back to the advert or variant level in the cascade.)
Click Update Category.

Set dispatch lead days via CSV import/export

Sign in to the Operator portal.
Go to Categorisation > Categories.
Click the Bulk Upload button. You'll be redirected to the Category Imports page.
Select Download Categories. Save the CSV file.
Open the CSV file locally, and locate the Taxon dispatch lead days column.
Enter the number of dispatch lead days for each taxon.
Save and re-import the spreadsheet.

Review lead days before approving seller products

When reviewing a seller's product on the vetting page, dispatch lead days inherited from the variant, advert, or taxon are shown alongside the product's other SLA-relevant details.

Example: How dispatch lead days affect an invoice

An invoice can contain line items with different effective SLAs due to dispatch lead days:

Line item A has no dispatch lead days set anywhere in its cascade. Its effective SLA equals the base threshold of 3 days. It is dispatched within 3 days.
Line item B has 11 dispatch lead days set on its taxon. Its effective SLA is 3 + 11 = 14 days. It is dispatched after 20 days, missing its effective SLA.

Breach reporting stays at the invoice level: the whole invoice counts as breached because line item B missed its effective SLA, even though line item A met its own. An invoice breaches if any one line item inside it misses its effective SLA. See Marketplace metrics and Seller metrics for how invoice-level breaches roll up into reporting.