Tracking numbers: the small task that decides your seller rating
Marketplaces do not measure how fast you ship. They measure whether a valid tracking number was uploaded on time. Here is how to never miss one.
Every marketplace has a version of the same metric: eBay's "tracking uploaded on time", Amazon's "valid tracking rate", Cdiscount's shipping confirmation delay. The parcel can be on the customer's doorstep — if the number was not uploaded within the window, it counts as late.
Where the number comes from
When you source from a supplier, the carrier number appears in the supplier's order page or shipping email, usually a few hours to two days after the order. It then has to be copied into the right order on the right marketplace, with the right carrier selected. Four places where a human can slip.
The three failure modes
- Forgotten — the shipping email arrived on a Saturday, nobody looked until Monday.
- Wrong carrier — the number is valid but assigned to the wrong carrier, so the marketplace cannot verify it. Amazon treats that as no tracking at all.
- Wrong order — two similar orders, numbers swapped. Both customers now see someone else's parcel.
Doing it automatically
The fix is to close the loop: the platform that placed the supplier order is the one that watches for the shipping confirmation, reads the carrier and number, and uploads them to the marketplace order it came from. No inbox, no copy-paste, no Saturday gap.
Two details matter. The carrier must be mapped to what each marketplace expects (a "Colissimo" number is "La Poste" on one channel and "Colissimo" on another). And the upload should happen the minute the number exists — not in a nightly batch — because the on-time window is measured in hours.
What changes
Sellers who automate this typically move from 85–90 % on-time tracking to 99 % within a week. The remaining 1 % are supplier delays, which you can see coming in the dashboard and handle before the customer asks.