I am somewhat of a newbie when it comes to the whole MQD thing. I don't live in the US (and also English isn't my first language, so please be patient if I word things incorrectly), so until the beginning of this year, MQD was not a metric relevant to me. Hence I ignored it and got my current GM status purely based on the distance flown last year(MQM, if I recall correctly). Of course this has changed now.

Looking at my SkyMiles profile, it shows that I have $X MQD already posted for this year, and $Y (the ticket price for an upcoming TATL next week) pending. So far, so good.
For the upcoming flights, I upgraded on two segments (via the seat map in the Delta app, I have read that it must be done through a Delta channel), paying with cash for one, and with miles for the other. It is my understanding that both the price paid in cash and also an equivalent amount (I found something saying 1 cent per mile spent?) for the price paid in miles also counts towards MQD. But - neither of the two shows up on the MQD earned or MQD pending information. In fact, they don't show up in my SkyMiles activity at all, except for the number of miles taken out of my account to pay for the upgrade,

I can imagine it only counts as "in your account" after the flights, just like the "award miles" (whatever the proper term is for the miles that you can spend), but I would expect to see it as pending already. It would be really helpful to know how much I have to spend on a "mini mileage run" while I am in the US to retain my GM... My usual business trips to the US include quite lengthy layovers, and since we can book PremiumSelect (but no D1) on longhauls, GM makes things a lot more bearable when you can spend the 7 hours in the SkyClub instead of the gate area.

Is it normal for those not to show as "pending" before the flight? When I check the ticket number in the SkyMiles portal, it says it's already added to my account. I am confused.

Any thoughts are appreciated!