When will a Scribble card arrive?
Scribble quotes an arrival window, not a delivery date. With no date requested, the window is the three calendar days ending on the soonest achievable arrival, which is seven working days from now. Ask for an exact day and the window collapses to that day, at the cost of one extra working day of production lead time.
On this page
#The arithmetic
You give Scribble one date: when the card should be at the door. Everything else is derived backwards, in working days, so a Thursday arrival date does not quietly schedule writing for a Sunday.
| Deadline | Derivation | Working days before arrival |
|---|---|---|
| Post by | arrival − transit − post buffer | 4 |
| Pack by | post by − pack lead (− exact-day buffer) | 5, or 6 for an exact day |
| Write by | pack by − write lead | 6, or 7 for an exact day |
| Card stock by | write by − artwork lead | 7, or 8 for an exact day |
| Setting | Value |
|---|---|
| Working days | Monday to Friday |
| USPS First Class transit | 3 working days |
| Post buffer | 1 working day |
| Pack lead | 1 working day |
| Write lead | 1 working day |
| Card stock lead | 1 working day |
| Default window width | 3 calendar days |
| Exact-day buffer | 1 extra working day |
#A worked example
A card created on Wednesday 5 August 2026 with no date requested came back from the API with:
"arrives_between": { "earliest": "2026-08-12", "latest": "2026-08-14" }| Deadline | Date |
|---|---|
| Card stock prepared by | Wed 5 Aug (today) |
| Written by | Thu 6 Aug |
| Packed by | Fri 7 Aug |
| Posted by | Mon 10 Aug |
| Arrives between | Wed 12 Aug and Fri 14 Aug |
Seven working days from creation to the far end of the window, and the window covers the three calendar days ending there.
#Asking for an exact day
Set arrive_on on the API, or an arrive-by date in the campaign wizard, and the window collapses. A card requested for 14 September 2026 came back as:
"arrives_between": { "earliest": "2026-09-14", "latest": "2026-09-14" }Its card stock deadline was 2 September, eight working days earlier rather than seven. That extra day is what exact-day accuracy costs: the scheduler gives up its slack, so the card has to start earlier.
#Big runs take longer to start
A campaign of several thousand cards occupies several days on the machines, so writing has to start earlier than a single card's write-by date. It never changes the posting date, because writing early is free and posting early is not. The schedule step tells you the production start date, and the cancellation deadline is 9am on that date.
#How long a card takes, at a glance
| Request | Soonest arrival | What you are quoted |
|---|---|---|
| No date given | 7 working days (9 to 11 calendar days) | A three-day window ending on that date |
| An exact day, at least 8 working days out | The day you asked for | That single day |
| An exact day sooner than that | Not offered | The date picker stops offering dates it cannot hit |
#Common questions
- Why a window and not a date?
- USPS transit is not deterministic. Quoting a single day means either padding it so heavily it is useless, or being wrong a meaningful fraction of the time. A three-day window is honest and still tight enough to plan around.
- Does the window include weekends?
- The window is three calendar days, so it can include a weekend. The production deadlines behind it are all working days.
- What does delivered mean?
- A carrier scan confirmed it. Not every piece of mail gets a delivery scan, so a card without one has not necessarily gone astray.
- Are holidays accounted for?
- Yes. USPS holidays are configured as non-working days and the derivation skips them, so a December arrival date is not a guess with a buffer taped over it.
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