Ebay total transactions confusion

I'm confused how ebay calculates total transactions?
For example, my seller dashboard the other day showed my global transactions from Jan 1 to Dec 31, 2017 at 952. Today I made 1 sale internationally and I went to check my transactions again in Seller Dashboard expecting to see 953, but now it's down to 950. Huh?

Is it considered a transaction the moment the buyer pays me or the moment I ship out the item or a certain time period after the transaction date has passed?

It is a transaction as soon as you make the sell but it will not update in your history until after 12AM PST. I believe even cancelled sales count as a transaction but will not reflect in your $ sales total.

I think it is actually showing your transactions for the last 12 months and not the time period it says. My seller hub shows 985 transactions in the last 12 months and the seller dashboard shows this same amount supposedly form Jan 1st to Dec 31st.

If you notice in the dashboard it says: "To be a Top Rated Seller, you must have at least 100 transactions and $1,000.00 in sales during the past 12 months" and it shows a bar graph with your transactions and sales amount.

So if your at 950 right now, you sell 10 items today and 12 months ago you sold 5 items. When the sales history updates at 12 AM PST you will only show 955 because those 5 sales from a year ago will have dropped off. If you sell 5 today and you sold 10 items 12 months ago, you will actually drop to 945 because it adds 5 and drops 10.

Feedback is calculated over a 12 month period. Defects are too unless you sell a certain amount per month then I believe it is quarterly. So it makes sense that your transactions are as well.

Thanks for the reply. Yes, I was guessing that was the reason. It looks like it counts total transactions for the past 365 days (1 year) but not static year (Jan 1 to Dec 31) but whatever date I'm at, just the 365 days ago from the current date.

Is anyone else able to confirm if canceled sales still count towards transaction totals? My 2nd guess was that canceled transactions were coming off my total which might be why my number was going down after I made a couple cancellations. It would be good to know 100% for sure which one is the reason (or maybe they are both correct).

Well just an update.........i was able to get my defect rating down from 0.32 to 0.29 in the past 3 weeks by making about 250 transactions. However, it seems like there is a delay in the stats. Even though I did it all before Jan 20th evaluation, after the evaluation on the 20th, I fell to below standard even though I'm now only at 0.29% and it says if I was evaluated today, I'd be top rated lol. My next evaluation is Feb. 20th which I will be top rated again. So I guess everything it;s delayed by 1 month. I've still been making sales since the 20th, but that's no problem, as long as I'm back to top rated by next evaluation on feb. 20th even though I have accomplished my mission and got down to 0.29%. Real confusing them ebay folks.