TikTok fees and shipping profit

TikTok does not tell a seller what it charged until an order settles, which is a week or two after the show, once the parcel is delivered and the return window has passed. On the night, nobody has the real number: not you, not Seller Center, not LASI.

So LASI does three things. It estimates the fee when you finalize, using your shop’s own rate. It replaces that estimate with TikTok’s figure as soon as TikTok has one, order by order. And it keeps the estimate from the night beside the corrected figure, so you can always see the difference.

All of it runs by itself, every hour. There is nothing to type after the show.

This is the part most spreadsheets get wrong. TikTok’s referral fee is charged on the item price plus the shipping the buyer paid, not on the item price alone. LASI does the same.

That is why your fees can look like 7–8% of your sales at a 6% rate, and why a seller’s payouts often come in lower than their own records suggest.

A show’s fee is the sum of its orders’ fees, and every order moves through three stages on its own:

• A show with half its orders settled is not “half paid”: it is the settled half at TikTok’s real fee plus the other half at the next best figure.
• A refund or partial refund reduces the fee, because TikTok gives that part of the fee back.
• A cancelled order is never charged an estimated fee, but anything TikTok did settle against it counts.
• A $0 giveaway has no fee and never holds a show open.
• Once every order in a show has settled, the show is marked final.

Every hour, LASI reads TikTok’s settlements and its estimates, works out each open show’s fee, and writes it onto that show’s sales, spread over them by price to the cent. The Dashboard, the Sales page, Finance and the show’s own report all read those sales, so they all correct together.

• The fee from the night is kept. On the Finance page, switch the fee view to At finalize to read it, or Latest fees for the corrected one. See Finance.
• The Shows tab in Finance shows each show’s Fee at finalize beside its Fee now.
• If you finalize a show again, its sales are rebuilt from the estimate, and the next hourly pass corrects them again.
• You can turn the correction off (below). Every show then goes back to its fee from the night, exactly.

Some TikTok sales can never be tied to TikTok’s orders: a show with no linked stream, a show recorded with the TikTok Show Import, or sales whose show was deleted. No order-by-order figure will ever exist for them.

Instead of leaving them on the night’s estimate for good, LASI waits until the month has closed and its orders have settled (21 days after the month ends), then prices those sales at the rate TikTok actually charged your shop on item sales that month. Finance labels them at the month’s rate.

• A month without enough settled orders to measure keeps what it had. Nothing is borrowed from the month next door.
• TikTok sometimes runs a reduced rate for a while. A promotional month stays cheap in your books, because each month uses its own rate.
• Link a show’s stream later and it moves to its exact fees within the hour.

Open Settings → Business → TikTok Fees. Every finalize uses this rate, on the web, on the iPhone app and in the SKU review, so nobody types a fee at the end of a stream.

trylasi.com/settings#business

1. 1Type your rate in TikTok fee (%). For most US shops this is 6.
2. 2Click Save TikTok fee.
3. 3Read the grey box. Once TikTok has settled some of your orders, it says what TikTok actually charged over the last thirty days, on item plus buyer-paid shipping, and the same dollars as a share of item sales alone.
4. 4Leave Use my measured rate automatically ticked (see below) unless you have a reason to fix the rate yourself.

Use my measured rate automatically

This is on by default. LASI measures what TikTok really charged your shop over the last 30 days and uses that, re-measuring every day. It waits until it has at least 200 settled orders across 14 selling days; until then the rate you typed applies. The line under the box tells you which is in effect.

Turn it off to always use the rate you typed.

Update each show’s fees as TikTok settles

Also on by default. Every hour, a show with a linked stream has its fee replaced by TikTok’s own figure per order, as described above. Turn it off and every show goes back to the fee it was given at finalize; turn it on again and shows pick up TikTok’s figures at the next hourly sync.

The Platform Fees card under it holds the rates for places whose fees LASI cannot read from the platform, like Whatnot or Shein. A Shopify order’s fee is read from what Shopify Payments charged on it. See Settings.

A host’s commission is worked out on the show’s sales less its fees. It is filed when you finalize, on LASI’s estimate, and then updated exactly once: when TikTok’s own figure has arrived for the show’s orders, usually within hours. If some orders still have no figure a day after the show closed, it goes ahead with what TikTok has.

After that it stays put. A settlement two weeks later changes your books, not anyone’s pay. The rate on the commission entry is kept, and an amount someone typed by hand is never overwritten. It changes again only when a person finalizes again, links or corrects the host, or re-files it. See Hosts, co-hosts and commission.

If you use TikTok’s Early Settlement, TikTok advances part of a shipped order before it settles and takes the advance back out of a later payout. The advance changes when money arrives, not how much. But each advance carries a small service fee that TikTok takes out of it and shows on no statement.

LASI works that fee out from the advances themselves. An advance is a whole-dollar amount less the fee, so an advance of $4,650.00 at 0.5% arrives as $4,626.75: the $23.25 is the fee. If no rate TikTok allows explains your advances, LASI shows the fee as unknown rather than guessing.

• The fee is on your P&L’s Platform fees line, on the day the advance was paid.
• Finance → Cash flow has an Early payouts card: what was advanced, what was taken back, the service fee, and what is Owed back now. See Finance.
• The fee is not refunded when an order is.

TikTok also settles money tied to no order: a reimbursement for a parcel the carrier lost, a chargeback, a deduction. It is in your payouts, so it is on your P&L on its own line, TikTok reimbursements & chargebacks, dated by the statement that carried it.

It is not revenue (nothing was sold) and not a fee (nothing was charged for a sale), so it changes your profit without changing your sales or your fee rate.

Buyers pay TikTok for shipping, and TikTok passes that money to you. If you buy labels through a shipping service for less than buyers paid, the difference is profit; if they cost more, it is a loss. LASI tracks it show by show, from two numbers:

• Buyers paid for shipping: what the show’s buyers paid, not counting cancelled orders. LASI pulls it from the show’s linked TikTok streams, or from the CSV if you finalized from a file, or you can type it.
• Labels & postage you paid: what the carrier or label service charged you for that show. Only you know this, so you type it, usually days later when the bill arrives.

Shipping income is its own line on the P&L, so it never changes your item sales, fee rate or margins. See the public guide Shipping can be a profit line, not a cost line for why it is worth tracking.

There are two ways to ship, and many shops do some of each:

If a show mostly used your own labels but a few went through TikTok, the TikTok ones are added to the bill you type; they do not replace it.

You can enter the bill from four places. They all save to the same show, so use whichever is nearest.

From the Auctions page

1. 1Open Auctions and find the show. A show owing a bill has its Shipping menu item in amber.
2. 2Click the show’s ⋯ menu and choose Shipping.
3. 3If Buyers paid for shipping is empty, click Pull from TikTok (or type it).
4. 4Type what you paid under Labels & postage you paid, and a note if you like.
5. 5Check the Shipping margin and click Save.

trylasi.com/auctions

From the iPhone app

On the Shows tab, a show with no bill says “Add label bill” (admins) or “Label bill not entered” (managers). Tap it, or long-press the show and choose Shipping. Fill in Labels & postage you paid and Note — optional, then tap Save.

From Finance

Open Finance → Costs → Shipping, tick Only shows missing a label cost, and click Enter paid on each show. This is the quickest way to type a whole week of bills. See Finance.

From the Dashboard

When shows are waiting for a bill, the Shipping card on the Dashboard says so. Click Enter bills, then Enter bill on a show, and Save. See Dashboard, Sales and Orders.

• The Dashboard’s Shipping card: the range’s shipping profit, what buyers paid, label cost, and shows awaiting a bill (admins and managers; profit and cost for admins only).
• `Finance → Costs → Shipping`: every show with both sides and its margin (admins).
• A finished show’s report: what the labels cost for that show. See Finalizing a show.
• The iPhone app: Menu → Finance → Costs → Shipping for admins, Menu → Shipping profit for managers, and the “Label bill not entered” note on the Shows tab.