Kaufland judges its sellers on a small set of numbers. One of them costs money directly. The others cost visibility: miss them for long enough and Kaufland hides your offers in that country. This article puts them side by side: what Kaufland measures, the target it names, the period it looks at, and what happens when you miss it.
The sum behind the cancellation fee has its own article, on what a cancellation rate above 1% costs. Here it is one metric among several.
The metrics at a glance
| Metric | Kaufland’s target | Period |
|---|---|---|
| Seller-related cancellation rate | below 1% | last completed month |
| Ticket response time | 100% of first replies within 48 hours (working days) | last calendar week |
| Ticket rate across all tickets | no target | last calendar week |
| Adjusted seller-related ticket rate | below 1% | last calendar week |
| Trackable shipments rate | at least 80% | last completed month |
| Late deliveries and early deliveries | no more than 10% each | last calendar week |
One detail applies to all of them: Kaufland counts each order unit separately. An order with ten items is ten order units, not one order.
Cancellation rate: the one that costs money
The seller-related cancellation rate is the share of all items ordered in the last completed month that were cancelled for a reason on your side, whether you cancelled or Kaufland did. Kaufland lists these reasons as seller-related: goods not in stock, incorrect price, cancellation without a reason, incorrect product data, goods not received, no response from the seller, and delivery delayed.
If the rate is 1% or more, Kaufland charges a fee:
- 1% to 2.99%: 7% of the total price of the cancelled transactions;
- Over 3%: 15% of the cancelled transactions. For exactly 3%, Kaufland states no rate.
According to the Seller University, only the seller or Kaufland’s customer service can cancel an order, not the buyer. The one exception is in the Seller API documentation: in the first 15 minutes after checkout, buyers can cancel from their customer account, before you see the delivery address. Your cancellations are listed in the “Sales” report in the Seller Portal and on your monthly invoice. The cancellation rate calculator works out your own month.
The cancellation you did not make
If an order unit has not been marked as shipped 14 days after the latest delivery date, and no ticket is open for the order, Kaufland notifies you. If the status does not change within seven days of that notice, Kaufland cancels the order unit on your behalf. That cancellation counts as seller-related. An order you shipped but forgot to mark can therefore end up in your cancellation rate.
Tickets: response time and ticket rates
Response time
You are expected to answer 100% of open tickets within 48 hours on working days. Kaufland measures your on-time first replies against all first replies in the last calendar week, and takes weekends and national holidays into account. In practice that means answering every working day, with someone covering for holidays and sick leave.
Seller-related ticket rate
This rate counts tickets opened in the last calendar week with a reason on your side: delivery delayed, delivery not received, incomplete delivery, incorrect delivery, defect or damage, and invoice. Kaufland divides them by your weekly average of order units from the last four weeks that received such a ticket. Its own example: five tickets last week, on order units from four weeks totalling 100, gives an average of 25 per week and a rate of 20%.
The adjusted seller-related ticket rate leaves out three kinds of ticket: “delivery delayed” or “delivery not received” opened while the order was still inside the delivery window; “invoice” when an invoice was already in your account; and “defective” or “damaged”. Kaufland names a target below 1% for the adjusted rate; for the ticket rate across all tickets it sets no target.
A ticket has a second cost. An open ticket pauses the period until Kaufland releases the revenue for that order.
Delivery: tracking and late deliveries
Trackable shipments rate. The share of order units you shipped last month with a valid tracking number. Kaufland expects at least 80%. Without tracking, buyers are more likely to open a “delivery delayed” ticket, even when the parcel is on time.
Late delivery rate. The share of order units delivered late, out of all order units delivered in the last calendar week. Kaufland also looks at early deliveries: the on-time rate is the share delivered within your delivery window. The rate of early deliveries and the rate of late deliveries should each be no more than 10%.
If last week’s delivery performance fell short, Kaufland emails you the following Monday with a report of the order units concerned. Where needed, the report includes a recommended delivery window, based on your last 30 days. For windows under ten days, Kaufland recommends a span of no more than three days, for example 2 to 4 days.
Kaufland also offers Smart Delivery Time Automation in the shipping settings, which adjusts delivery windows based on your past performance. According to Kaufland, offers using it are excluded from the KPI process, so they are not deactivated for deviating rates.
What happens when you miss a target: four warning levels
If your performance fell short on at least one metric in a sales channel the previous week, Kaufland emails an overview per sales channel in the even calendar weeks. Your current warning level is shown in the performance dashboard of the Seller Portal, above the “To be processed” list. The levels:
- Information. A metric misses the target. No response needed, but improve.
- Offers at risk of being hidden. Take concrete steps immediately, then contact Kaufland’s controlling team.
- Hiding of offers in review. Kaufland is reviewing whether to hide your offers in that sales channel.
- Offers hidden. Your offers in that sales channel are hidden for the time being. Once you have improved, you can ask the controlling team for a review.
The levels apply per sales channel. A bad month in one country can hide your offers there while your other channels keep selling. For a cross-border seller, that means reading the numbers per country, not as one total. A slow carrier on one route shows up in that country’s figures first.
Where to find the reports
In the Seller Portal, under Reports, “Customer satisfaction and shipping performance” holds the downloads for the individual metrics. The “Your sales” report lets you filter open order units with a delivery date in the past, which Kaufland asks you to clear as soon as possible.
What helps day to day
- Stock you can trust. If an item is running low, set it to zero before it sells twice.
- Tickets every working day. The 48 hours keep running in busy weeks too.
- Always a tracking number. It supports the 80%, prevents “delivery delayed” tickets and usually gets your money released sooner.
- Delivery times you can keep. Add known carrier delays to your transport time rather than hoping they do not happen.
- Upload invoices. An uploaded invoice avoids “invoice” tickets, except where Kaufland invoices as deemed supplier.
Kaufland’s own figures arrive after the week or month has closed. Sellgrip calculates cancellation rate, ticket rate and late shipments from your order data over the last 30 days in Account metrics, next to Kaufland’s own monthly figure. Delivery performance breaks late shipments, cancellations and tracking down by period and country, on every plan. Customer service shows every ticket with the 48-hour clock, also on every plan. On Business, Early warning tells you when a metric is heading the wrong way.
