The SLA watchdog is one of the highest-impact features Robnu ships. It’s also the simplest. Here’s the mental model.
SLA-headroom
For every open batch, the watchdog computes:
headroom = (closure_window_end − now) / (closure_window_end − closure_window_start)
Headroom is a percentage. 100% = full window left. 0% = window closed (breach). Negative = past the deadline.
You see this number on every batch in the Robnu dashboard. The watchdog escalates when it crosses thresholds.
The thresholds
Defaults:
- 30% headroom — heads-up. Mild ping in the dashboard, no email. “This batch is in the back half of its window. If you have more shipments to add, do it now.”
- 10% headroom — act now. Email + dashboard banner. “This batch will breach if you don’t close in the next few minutes.”
- 0% headroom — breached. Slack notification + dashboard error. “Closure now will land outside the window. Either close immediately and accept the deduction, or escalate to support.”
The thresholds are tunable in settings. Most sellers leave them at defaults.
Why 30% / 10% specifically
We picked these numbers from the data of early users. The 30% threshold catches the “I forgot the time” pattern — most sellers who get a 30% ping close within an hour, well before the actual deadline.
The 10% threshold catches the “I’m in the slip queue and I lost track” pattern — sellers in the middle of operations who didn’t realise the clock was running. 10% gives roughly 30 minutes to either close cleanly or make a deliberate decision to delay.
Below 10%, you’re in scramble territory. The watchdog still helps — it tells you to stop trying to add shipments and just close — but you’re now in the cost-of-rushed-decisions zone.
What the watchdog does not do
- It doesn’t auto-close. Even at 0% headroom, you decide what happens.
- It doesn’t override your closure policy. If you’re on delayed mode and the delay time hasn’t hit, the watchdog escalates but doesn’t preempt.
- It doesn’t pretend a breach is recoverable. If the deadline passed, the deduction is coming. The watchdog tells you that bluntly.
What it does do that’s underrated
The watchdog’s biggest lift isn’t catching the obvious miss. It’s normalising the act of closing earlier than your gut says you should.
Most sellers’ gut tells them to close at the very end of the window. “I might get more shipments ready; let me wait.” The watchdog reframes the question: “you have 18% headroom; is the next shipment 18% likely to be ready in time?”
Usually the answer is no. Most batches that “might get one more shipment” don’t, and the cost of waiting (rushed closure, error rate up, midnight stress) exceeds the cost of waiting one more shipment for tomorrow’s batch.
Read more
- Process — Process pillar
- Manifest at midnight — what midnight closures actually cost
- Closure policy explained — the closure policy modes