Finance: P&L, costs and cash flow

The Dashboard tells you what you sold. Finance tells you what you kept: sales, less TikTok’s fees, less what the stock cost, less labels, losses, host commission, helpers’ pay and your running costs. It also follows the money after the sale, from a parcel in transit to a deposit in your bank.

Open it from the sidebar under Analytics → Finance, or on the iPhone app from Menu → Finance.

Most of the page is built from your own sales and costs in LASI, so it works even with no TikTok connection. The Shows and Cash flow tabs read TikTok’s settlement data, so they fill in once TikTok Shop is connected (Settings → Integrations → TikTok).

A bar at the top stays in view as you scroll. Every tab follows it.

trylasi.com/reports/finance

• Date range: 7d, 30d, 90d, MTD (month to date), YTD (this year) or Custom, which opens two date boxes. The page opens on the last 90 days.
• Group by: Day, Week or Month. It sets the columns of the P&L statement and the bars of the charts. The page opens on Month.
• Fee basis: Latest fees or At finalize (see the next section). The page opens on Latest fees.

The range, the number of days and your timezone are printed in the top right. Every day on the page is your business day, in the timezone under Settings → Business → Timezone.

When you finalize a show, LASI can only estimate TikTok’s fees, because TikTok does not say what it charged until each order settles, a week or two later. LASI then corrects the fee by itself, every hour. The switch lets you read the same sales two ways:

On Latest fees, a blue note above the tab tells you where the fees stand: how many shows are fully settled, still settling, at the month’s rate or on the estimate, and the fee at finalize against the fee now, such as “At finalize $2,410 → now $2,588 · +$178 — TikTok charged more than the estimate”.

The same note mentions, when they apply: labels TikTok billed you inside settlements, TikTok’s early-payout service fee, and money TikTok settled that belongs to no order.

How all of this works, in plain words, is in TikTok fees and shipping profit.

The headline for the range, each compared with the same number of days just before it:

Below the tiles:

• Where your TikTok money is: how much of this range’s TikTok payout is in your bank and how much is still to come. Click it to open Cash flow.
• Revenue & net profit, a chart by day, week or month.
• Where every revenue dollar goes: fees, cost of goods, labels, commission and so on as a share of revenue, with net profit what is left.
• By channel: each place you sell, with its revenue, number of sales, profit and margin.

The P&L tab starts with a waterfall chart, Revenue to net profit, then a statement with one column per day, week or month and a Total column on the right. Deductions are in parentheses and subtotals are shaded.

trylasi.com/reports/finance#pnl

The Shows tab puts every show in the range on one row, with where its fee and its money stand. The tiles on top are Shows (and how many have final fees), TikTok fees now against the fees at finalize, In your bank and Still to come.

trylasi.com/reports/finance#shows

1. 1Filter with All, Settling, Final or Estimated.
2. 2Click a show. Its orders open under the table: each with where the money is, the dates it was Ordered, Delivered, Settled and Deposited, its items, shipping, fee and payout (marked est. until it settles).
3. 3Type an Order number to find one order, then Close when you are done.

A show with no orders listed has no linked TikTok stream. Link it and TikTok’s figures arrive within the hour. See Dashboard, Sales and Orders.

The Bins tab ranks every bin that sold or lost anything in the range. The line above the table counts the bins, how many made money, total profit, the stock you still hold at cost and what was lost.

Click a column heading to sort by it, use Find a bin… to search, and click a bin’s name to open its page.

The Costs tab is everything that costs money beyond the goods themselves. Three tiles across the top show each total for the range; click one to open it.

• Expenses: rent, supplies, software, anything you log by hand.
• Shipping: what buyers paid for shipping less what labels cost. The tile turns amber when shows still need a label bill.
• Losses: damaged, missing, returned and replaced stock, at cost.

trylasi.com/reports/finance#shipping

1. 1Open Finance → Costs and click the Expenses tile.
2. 2Under Log an expense, type the Amount and pick the Date.
3. 3Pick a Category, or choose + New category…, type its name and click Add.
4. 4Fill in Vendor and Description if you like (both optional).
5. 5Click Add expense.

Below the form, By category totals the range, and Expenses in range lists every expense with Edit and Delete. Edit fills the form (now titled Fix this expense) for you to change and Save changes, or Cancel.

The Shipping view is where most sellers type in what their labels cost, show by show. The tiles show the Shipping margin, what Buyers paid, what You paid, and how many shows are Awaiting label cost.

1. 1Open Finance → Costs and click the Shipping tile.
2. 2Tick Only shows missing a label cost to see just the ones you still owe.
3. 3Click Enter paid on a show, type what you paid and an optional note (carrier, batch…).
4. 4Click Save, or press Enter.

If a show has no buyer-paid shipping recorded yet, click Pull from TikTok in the Buyers paid column. When a show’s labels were bought through TikTok, its cost fills in by itself and reads “via TikTok”: there is nothing to type.

Why this matters, and the other places to enter a bill, are in TikTok fees and shipping profit.

The Losses view lists every unit written off in the range: Units Lost, Cost Lost, This Month and Returns Restocked, a By reason breakdown, and a table you can filter with From, To and Reason.

Click Undo on a row to reverse a loss. LASI tells you what will happen first: units go back into stock at their recorded cost, or, for a restocked return, the units come back out.

Managers and anyone who records losses see the same list, without costs, under Inventory → More → Losses, and record new ones with Inventory → More → Record a loss. See Inventory.

The Orders tab, titled Sales detail, lists each sale in the range with its units, revenue, fees, shipping, cost of goods, profit and margin.

• Search by Item, buyer or date….
• Filter by place with the chips (All channels, then one per place).
• Click Export CSV to download what you are looking at, for your accountant or a spreadsheet.

This is not the same as the Orders page in the sidebar, which is TikTok’s live order feed. See Dashboard, Sales and Orders.

TikTok does not pay you the moment a buyer checks out. It holds the money until the parcel is delivered, waits out its return window, puts the order on a settlement statement, and then pays the statement to your bank. Cash flow shows where every order’s money is on that road.

The tab reads, top to bottom:

• Payout from orders in this range, split into In your bank and Still to come, with a bar for each stage.
• How long each step takes for your shop: Order to delivered, Order to settled, Settled to deposited and Order to deposit, as medians.
• Where each day’s sales are now: one bar per order day, split by stage.
• From sale to payout: Item sales, less TikTok fees, plus Shipping, plus any Adjustments, gives the Payout.
• Deposits, Early payouts, Money outside any order and Statements (next sections).

trylasi.com/reports/finance#cashflow

Deposits lists every payout that reached your bank in the range: when it was Deposited, the Account, how many Orders it carried and when they Sold, then Items, Fees, Shipping, Early payout and what went To bank. Use it to match LASI against your bank statement.

Money outside any order, when there is any, lists what TikTok settled that belongs to no order (reimbursements, chargebacks, deductions), by type. It is on the P&L’s TikTok reimbursements & chargebacks line.

If you use TikTok’s Early Settlement, TikTok pays part of a shipped order before it settles and takes that advance back out of a later payout. It is a loan against your own sales, and it has a price: a small service fee that TikTok takes from each advance and shows on no statement.

The Early payouts card on Cash flow shows:

• Advanced: what TikTok paid ahead in the range, and how much reached you.
• Taken back: what later settlements recovered.
• Service fee: what the advances cost you.
• Owed back now: advanced and not yet taken back, as of today. A ≥ in front means LASI is still reading your older history, so the real figure is at least this much.

The service fee is also on the P&L’s Platform fees line, on the day each advance was paid. How LASI works out a fee TikTok never prints is in TikTok fees and shipping profit.

The last section of Cash flow, Statements, is closed until you click it. It holds TikTok’s own settlement records exactly as TikTok reports them.

• Tiles for Net settled, Fees (actual), Refunds and Payouts.
• Where the fees went: every settled fee in the range, by type.
• Estimated vs actual by day: what LASI estimated against what TikTok charged, day by day.
• Statements: click one to see the orders inside it.
• Payouts: transfers to the bank as TikTok reports them.

Settlements sync by themselves every hour. To pull now, click Sync from TikTok. The line beside it says when it last synced.

Open Menu → Finance on the iPhone app. It is kept simple on purpose: one range and three views.

• Range: Today, Yday, Week, 7d, MTD, 30d, 90d or Year.
• Overview: profit, revenue, a profit chart and your best bins, plus an amber line when a show is waiting for a label bill.
• Shows: each show in the range.
• Costs: three cards, Expenses, Shipping and Losses, each with its total for the range. Tap one to open its own screen.

For the full P&L statement, cash flow, deposits and statements, use the web. See The LASI iPhone app.