Helm › Helm University › Track 5 › Lesson 5.4
Lesson 5.4Payout tiers and how you move up
Three tiers, two promotion thresholds and one demotion rule. All of it derived from your own record, none of it decided by a person.
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This lesson prepares you to: Name the three payout tiers and the order counts and refund rate that move you between them.
The three tiers
| Tier | Hold after delivery | How you get there |
|---|---|---|
| Introductory | 14 days | Where every shop starts |
| Standard | 7 days | 5 completed payouts |
| Express | 2 days | 25 completed payouts |
Promotion counts completed payouts, not orders
This is the part people get wrong, so read it twice. The threshold is not orders placed and it is not orders delivered. It is orders that have already been paid out to you.
Your fifth payout is what moves you to standard. That means your sixth order is the first one that gets the shorter hold, and only once the first five have actually completed their own holds and transferred. There is a lag built into it by design, because the whole point of the hold is to have seen an order all the way to the end before shortening the next one.
The demotion rule
One rule overrides both thresholds. If your refund rate goes above 5%, you are back on introductory regardless of how many orders you have shipped.
The rate is refunded orders divided by all your orders, counted over your whole history, not a rolling window. Twenty five clean orders and two refunds is 7.4% and puts you back on 14 days. The same twenty five orders with one refund is 3.8% and does not.
Why volume does not buy you out of it
Some marketplaces let a big enough seller keep favourable terms through a bad patch, because the volume is worth more than the risk. Helm does not, and the reason is in the code comment: volume is not evidence of a clean record. A seller refunding one order in twelve is a seller whose buyers are unhappy, whatever the total.
Nobody sets your tier
There is no application, no form, no support ticket and no admin screen. Your tier is computed from your own orders every single time a payout is considered. If you cross a threshold today, the next payout uses the new number. If your refund rate climbs, the next payout uses the longer hold without anyone being told to do it.
That cuts both ways, and you should know the unflattering half: nobody can grant you an exception either.
A worked timeline
You open a shop and sell steadily, everything arrives, nothing is refunded.
- Orders 1 to 5. Introductory. Each releases 14 days after the carrier records delivery.
- Around order 6 to 8. Your fifth payout completes and you are standard. Orders from that point release 7 days after delivery.
- Around order 26 to 30. Your twenty fifth payout completes and you are express. Orders release 2 days after delivery.
The ranges are ranges because it depends how fast your early orders were delivered, not on anything Helm decides.
How this compares
The thing worth knowing is not the day count, it is how long you wait before the day count can improve. Marketplaces commonly require something like thirty delivered orders inside a ninety day window before a performance score even exists for you to be measured on. Helm starts moving you at five.
Where we are behind: at the top tier, some marketplaces release one day after delivery. Our fastest is two.
Next: what actually starts the clock, and what happens when a delivery is never recorded at all.