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Blog · Coverage and territory

How many days is dormant? Setting the threshold from the account's own cadence

Why a single dormancy threshold of 90 or 180 days is wrong for most of the book, how to set the threshold per account from its own order cadence, the multiple that separates a late order from a lost account, the roll-up per rep, and the two lists that come out: recently dormant accounts to recover and long-dormant accounts to reclassify.

The short answerDormant is a multiple of the account's own order cadence, not a fixed number of days. An account that orders weekly is dormant after six weeks of silence; one that orders quarterly is not dormant until nine months. Set the cadence per account as its median gap between orders over the trailing year, set the threshold as a stated multiple, say three, and list accounts whose days since last order exceed it, ranked by their run rate. The fixed 90-day rule flags every quarterly buyer and misses every weekly one.

A CRM setting says an account is dormant after ninety days. A supermarket chain that orders every Tuesday has by then missed twelve orders and nobody was told; a machine shop that orders every quarter has missed none and is on the list. Ninety days is not a fact about either of them. This guide sets the threshold from the account's own cadence.

The measure

Per account:

Cadence = median days between orders, trailing twelve months, at least three orders Days silent = today − last order date Dormant if days silent > multiple × cadence Lost if days silent > ceiling multiple × cadence, or an absolute ceiling

Ranked by run rate: the account's revenue per month before it went silent.

The rows you need

  • Orders: account, order date, value.
  • Account master: account, rep, segment.

Account identifiers only.

A worked comparison

Multiple 3. Ceiling 12.

Account Cadence Days silent Threshold 90-day rule says Cadence rule says
2207 7 44 21 Active Dormant, six orders missed
4471 91 120 273 Dormant Active, one order late
9034 30 190 90 Dormant Dormant, six missed
1187 14 400 42 Dormant Lost, past the ceiling

The ninety-day rule got two of four wrong in opposite directions and put a lost account on the recovery list.

Two lists

Recovery list. Dormant but not lost, per rep, ranked by run rate, with the cadence and the orders missed. These are calls.

Reclassification list. Past the ceiling. Per rep, for a decision: reassign, archive, or a last attempt. Not on the weekly call list.

The roll-up

accounts = active + dormant + lost + insufficient history

Every account in one state. Per rep and per region: the count in each and the run rate on the dormant list. A rep whose dormant run rate is rising is losing accounts faster than the pipeline shows.

Where it goes wrong

One threshold. Wrong for everyone except accounts at the average cadence.

Cadence from too few orders. Two orders a week apart, then a quarterly pattern. Require three; use the segment stand-in until then.

Lost accounts on the call list. The list fills with accounts that left years ago and the rep stops reading it. The ceiling keeps them off.

Seasonal accounts. An account that orders only in the autumn has a cadence of a year. Its threshold is three years, which is right; a seasonality flag from the order months makes the reason visible.

Every week, per account against its own cadence

Mapped once, the order history and the account master produce the cadences, the states, the recovery list and the reclassification list every week. Covirage builds this from the exports as they are. The dormant account term has the short definition, and the reactivation list guide covers what the recovery list carries beside the run rate.

Questions people ask

What multiple should be used?

Three times the median gap is a common starting point: an account is dormant when it has missed roughly two expected orders. The multiple is stated on the report, the same for every account, and revisited by looking at how many flagged accounts came back.

What about accounts with only one or two orders?

No cadence can be computed from one order. Those accounts use the segment's median cadence as a stand-in, labelled, until they have three orders of their own.

When does dormant become lost?

At a second, larger multiple, say twelve times the cadence, or a stated absolute ceiling. Past that the account moves off the recovery list and onto a reclassification list, so the rep's list stays about accounts that can plausibly come back.