Core concepts

Attribution & settled data

Why recent days keep changing, and how MerchDash keeps automation from acting on incomplete numbers.

When a shopper clicks your ad today and buys tomorrow, Amazon credits the sale back to the day of the click. That is attribution — and it means the last few days of your data are always incomplete and still changing. MerchDash is built around this fact.

The two-day settled window

Most late attribution lands within two days. MerchDash therefore treats the most recent two UTC days as unsettled: rolling windows in automation (LAST 7 DAYS, LAST 30 DAYS) and YESTERDAY automatically exclude them, so a rule never pauses a keyword for having “no orders” when the orders simply have not been attributed yet.

WindowWhat it reads
YESTERDAYThe latest settled attribution day — currently two UTC days behind today.
LAST 30 DAYSThe last 30 settled days (ending two days ago).
TODAY, N DAYS AGOExact calendar days, deliberately unlagged — partial data, useful when you explicitly want the freshest numbers.
FROM x DAYS AGO TO y DAYS AGOExact offset windows, also unlagged.

The 14-day restatement window

Amazon can restate sales up to about 14 days back. That is why every sync re-pulls the trailing 14-day window (see How data sync works): restated days are overwritten in place, and your archive converges on Amazon's final numbers. Beyond ~14 days, data is stable.

Why your numbers may differ from the Amazon console

  • Recency. The console shows live-but-partial numbers for recent days; MerchDash's settled windows intentionally exclude them. Compare like for like: a settled MerchDash window against the same fixed dates in the console, a couple of days after they end.
  • Sync timing. MerchDash data is as fresh as the last sync (roughly every 12 hours). The dashboard shows exactly when that was.
  • Time zone. MerchDash days are UTC.
Rule-writing takeaway. Use settled windows (LAST N DAYS, YESTERDAY) for anything that acts on conversions — pausing, harvesting, negating. Reach for TODAY only when partial same-day data is genuinely what you want, such as an intraday budget brake.