Due dates and undated items
Scout only gives an item a due date when something it read actually says so. That single rule explains most of what you see in the Inbox: why some items sit under No due date, why a date sometimes moves, and why Scout will not invent a deadline to make the list look tidier.
Where a due date comes from
A due date is always traceable to approved evidence — a supplier saying "art lock for the August 10 in-hands is Friday at end of day", an invoice's own terms, a cutoff stated in a thread. Scout records which piece of evidence the date came from, and the evidence row appears in The work — where this came from on the item.
What Scout will never do is derive a date from something that is not a deadline. The day a point was raised, the day it was published, how long it has been sitting there, how many reminders you have seen — none of those can become a due date. Business-day arithmetic on a real deadline is fine and appears as a CALC evidence row ("Business-day math: 1 working day until cutoff"). Guessing is not.
What "No due date" means
The last section of the Inbox is No due date. An item lands there when there is genuinely no deadline in the evidence — a reorder window that may be opening, a pattern worth knowing, a notice about a source. Undated work is not lower priority; it is work without a clock.
Two consequences matter:
- Undated work is always visible. The line under the section chips says so directly: "Undated work stays visible." Your workspace's rolling window (30, 45 or 60 days, with 45 the default) filters dated work only.
- Undated work never lapses. Lapsing depends on a date having passed, so an item with no date simply waits for a person.
When a due date changes
Dates move, because suppliers and customers move them. If new evidence changes a deadline, Scout updates the due date, records the change, and the item may hop from one section to another — out of Week and into Today, for example.
A changed due date counts as a meaningful change, so anyone following the item and anyone newly made accountable for it is told, through whichever channels they have turned on. You are not told about changes you caused yourself.
Overdue is a fact, not a scolding
The Overdue section holds items whose due date is earlier than today in your workspace's time zone. Scout says how far past due in words on the row ("1 day past due"). Overdue items stay in the Inbox and keep their evidence; they are not archived or downgraded for being late.
If an overdue item is never claimed, it eventually moves to the Lapsed shelf — after ten business days of continuous visibility — where it waits rather than disappearing.
Time zones
"Today", "overdue" and every section boundary are calculated in your workspace's time zone, which an Owner or Admin sets under Settings → Workspace → General. That keeps a team spread across several time zones agreeing on what is due today. Your own profile time zone affects when Scout sends you things — your morning brief and your item updates — not how the Inbox is grouped.
Good to know
- Not every person who can see an item can see where its date came from. Evidence tiers apply to due dates as much as to anything else.
- Business days currently mean weekdays. Saturdays and Sundays are excluded from Scout's business-day arithmetic; public holidays are not yet taken into account.
- Dated work beyond the window is not deleted — it becomes visible as the window rolls forward toward it.
- There is no way to type a due date onto an item by hand, and no snooze. If a deadline is wrong, the fix is in the source Scout read.