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The market, marketplace time & settlement

One market on a marketplace clock

The desk trades one market, the US Marketplace (us; the classic ids m15, m45, h2 and h10 are accepted as aliases of it). It is continuous: there are no sessions and no menus that open and close — supplier offers appear at every hour and stay open for days, stock sells hour by hour, money is posted day by day. A tick is one marketplace hour; tick numbers are derived from wall-clock time:

tick     = floor((now − genesis) / interval)        interval = 3600 / XGM_TIME_SCALE seconds (150 by default)
sim_time = sim_epoch + tick hours                    (2026-01-01 00:00 by default; marketplace day d = ticks 24d … 24d+23)

genesis is a configured timestamp (XGM_GENESIS) and XGM_TIME_SCALE the marketplace seconds per real second (default 24: one real hour per marketplace day), so tick numbers are stable across restarts and the offers open at any hour are a deterministic function of the recorded engine seed. GET /api/v1/markets/us publishes current_tick, tick_sim_at, sim_now, time_scale, ticks_per_day and when the open hour closes (tick_closes_at). What is stored is the record of what happened (the desk's book and account holders' lots), daily statistics, and orders, lots, prices, returns, daily postings, statements and cash. See The marketplace.

Life of a marketplace hour and day

  1. Offers. New supplier offers appear every hour; each stays open until its valid_until hour. The fee schedule in force is in the market's rules (with any amendment announced for a later hour).
  2. Ordering. Account holders fill carts; agents submit orders and get a purchase link. An order names its inbound route (default: partnered parcel) and may carry a starting pricing rule. It must be funded (card, or from cash) within its payment window — one real hour, and no longer than its offer is open (expires_tick, closes_at). Pricing rules and removal requests can be set at any time.
  3. The close of every hour. The engine (a single background loop, polling every few seconds):
    • records the new offers and the desk's decision on each, and the desk's trades;
    • fills every order paid during this hour or before → opens a lot with its lead time (9–35 days typically on the default route, longer in peak season); expires the unpaid orders whose window or offer ended;
    • works every account's stock of every SKU for the hour: arrivals, removals and disposals requested this hour, the sales at the account's own price (the rule in force for the hour) against the hour's buy box, customer refunds and returned units — every amount accrued on its lot;
  4. The close of every day (its last hour), after the hour's work:
    • posts each lot's money of the day to the account's seller balance — one entry per lot and kind — with the day's storage and the other on-hand charges;
    • appends the record's daily entries and settles the lots that have nothing left and no return on its way (realised P&L);
    • releases a settlement statement every 14th day (seller balance → cash, entries older than the 7-day hold, less a reserve for refunds);
    • records the day's statistics.
  5. A lot paid in hour T with a lead time of L days sells from hour T + 24·L until it is sold out, removed, or reaches the maximum age (546 days after its arrival); a pricing rule set during hour T applies from hour T+1; a removal requested during hour T is carried out at its close.

If the platform was down, the missed hours are processed in order on the next start (day closes included), with the same result as live closes.

Console timeline

The console's Timeline lists the next close, the state of the record, and a log of processed ticks with counts of filled/expired orders and advanced/settled lots.

Fees

The marketplace's published fee card applies (the schedule in force is rules.fees.schedule of the market): the inbound fee of the chosen route with the order; per unit sold the referral fee (a category's rate on the whole price, with a minimum) and the fulfilment fee (by size tier, shipping weight and price band, plus the peak and fuel surcharges); storage per cubic foot on hand (higher in the fourth quarter) with the aged-inventory and utilization surcharges; the low-inventory-level fee; returns processing and refund administration; removal and disposal. The tables and every rule are on The marketplace. Fees change only forward, by amendments announced at least 30 days ahead (real days), from a marketplace hour on.