Build an accumulating snapshot to time an order's fulfillment stages

Support keeps asking how long orders sit at each stage and I only have separate event rows to answer with.

AdvancedRead 9 minDoing: a day7 steps

▶ Start

What you'll have at the end

One row per order with a date column per milestone, updated in place, that answers how long each stage took

Before you start

You need

A dimensional model with a date dimension already built (one row per calendar day) and a raw log of fulfillment events landing somewhere queryable: an order id, a stage name, and a timestamp per event.

Not covered

This does not cover capturing the raw fulfillment events themselves, or building three separate date views for querying order, ship, and delivery dates independently; those are different techniques from updating one row in place.

Leans on

7 steps

Where to go next

Build a role-playing date dimension for order, ship, and delivery

If you only need to query three fixed dates independently and never touch the row again after it lands, three date views answer that without the update machinery this recipe builds.

Checked 25 Aug 2026

Part of the Kimball Data Modeling cookbook