Lead statuses explained
What every lead, delivery and dispute status means in LeadMove, and what to do about each one.
A lead in LeadMove carries three independent statuses, each answering a different question:
- Routing status — what happened to the lead inside your pipeline. Shown in the Leads list.
- Delivery status — what happened to each individual delivery to a buyer. Shown in the lead's delivery history.
- Dispute status — whether a buyer contested the lead after receiving it.
Most confusion comes from reading one as another. The classic case: a lead can be routed (sold to a buyer) while its delivery is still deferred (waiting for that buyer's business hours). Both are true at the same time.
Routing status
| Status | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Pending | Accepted, distribution is running or about to. | Nothing — this normally lasts seconds. |
| Held | Manual review is on for this pipeline. The lead is stored and scored, but won't be distributed until you approve it. | Approve or reject it from the lead page. If auto-release is set, it distributes by itself after the delay. |
| Routed | Distribution picked at least one buyer. | If the buyer says nothing arrived, check the delivery status below — it may be deferred or failed. |
| Unrouted | Distribution ran but no buyer matched or was available (conditions, caps reached, outside hours with "skip"). | Fix the cause, then assign the lead manually — or "Mark reviewed" to dismiss it from your attention counters. |
| Invalid | A required field is missing or malformed. The lead is kept so it can be corrected. | The webhook response (HTTP 422) includes the leadId — fix the data at the source and re-send. |
| Duplicate | Matched your deduplication rules, and the pipeline is set to "Keep, don't send to buyers". Never billed. | Nothing. If legitimate leads get caught, widen the dedup window or fields in pipeline settings. |
| Spam | Matched the pipeline's intake spam filter. Quarantined, never distributed, never billed. | The matched conditions are shown on the lead page. False positive? Adjust the filter and re-send the lead. |
| Transferred | A forwarding rule in transfer mode moved it to another pipeline. This pipeline's buyers won't receive it. | Find the lead in the target pipeline — that's where its life continues. |
| Failed | Every delivery to the selected buyer(s) failed. | Open the delivery history to see the errors, then retry or assign to another buyer. |
| Rejected | You rejected a held lead during manual review. | Nothing — this is a final state. |
Delivery status
Once a lead is routed, each buyer delivery gets its own status:
| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| Pending | Queued, or being handed to the buyer's endpoint (email, webhook, Google Sheets or SMS) and awaiting confirmation. |
| Delivered | Confirmed received. This is what triggers billing. |
| Failed | The endpoint returned an error after retries. |
| Deferred | The buyer is outside its operating hours and is set to "Hold & deliver when you reopen". |
“Deferred” is a delivery status, not a lead status
A lead shows a Deferred badge when it's routed but all its deliveries are waiting for the buyer to reopen. Nothing is wrong and nothing is lost: LeadMove re-checks every 15 minutes and delivers automatically at the buyer's next open window. If you'd rather have leads go to another buyer instead of waiting, switch that buyer's outside-hours behavior to "Skip me" in operating hours.
Dispute status
After delivery, a buyer (or you) can contest a lead — wrong number, unreachable, out of area…
| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| None | No dispute. |
| Disputed | A dispute is open and waiting for your decision. If you don't respond before the dispute window closes, it's auto-accepted. |
| Accepted | You granted a credit or a replacement lead. The lead is removed from your revenue figures. |
Rejecting a dispute returns the lead to None. Full flow, deadlines and replacement credits: How disputes work.
Common questions
My lead says "routed" but the buyer received nothing. Why? Routed means a buyer was selected, not that delivery succeeded. Open the lead and check its delivery status: deferred means it's waiting for the buyer's business hours, failed means the endpoint errored, pending means it's in flight.
What's the difference between "held" and "deferred"? Held happens before distribution: the lead waits for your approval (manual review). Deferred happens after: the lead is sold and waits for the buyer's opening hours.
Am I billed for spam or duplicate leads? No. Spam and rejected duplicates never reach a buyer and never count as billable deliveries. They also don't count toward your plan's monthly lead quota — only leads that aren't spam or a rejected duplicate do (including invalid ones, since those are still stored).
Can I recover an "invalid" lead? Yes — invalid leads are stored, not dropped. Fix the field at the source and send the lead again, or edit and re-submit it manually.
What should I do about "unrouted" leads piling up? Each one means sellable inventory found no buyer. The usual causes, in order: routing conditions too narrow, buyer caps reached, all matching buyers closed with "skip" behavior. The lead page shows the routing trace — it tells you exactly which buyers were considered and why each was excluded.