Key takeaways
- A settlement lists every deduction TikTok makes from an order, line by line
- Your payout is not your profit — VAT and product costs are still to come out
- Reading one settlement end to end is the fastest way to understand your fees
What a settlement is
A settlement is TikTok’s account of what an order earned you. It is created once the order is complete: delivered, and past the window in which the buyer can still return it. Until then the order is unsettled, and any profit figure for it is an estimate.
Settlements are grouped into statements, and each statement becomes a payout to your bank account. In Seller Center you find them under Finance, where you can open a statement, see the orders in it and download the details as a file.
The lines, one by one
Open a single order in a statement and you see where its money went. The names differ slightly between markets and change from time to time, but the lines fall into a few groups.
- Sales What the customer paid for the products, VAT included, minus any discount you funded yourself. Discounts TikTok pays for don’t come out of your share.
- Platform commission TikTok’s fee on the sale: a percentage set by your market and the product’s category. It is taken from every order, whether or not a creator was involved. Check the rate on your own statements; it changes with promotions and category.
- Creator commission Appears only when an affiliate creator brought in the order. It is the rate you agreed in the affiliate plan, applied to the sale, and it is deducted before the money reaches you.
- Shipping and fulfilment The shipping you pay when TikTok’s logistics deliver the order, after any part the customer paid or TikTok subsidised; if TikTok also packs and ships from its warehouse, the fulfilment fees appear here too.
- Refunds and adjustments Money returned to buyers, and corrections TikTok makes later. They land on the order they belong to, which is why an old order can still change.
What reaches your account is, roughly: sales, minus TikTok’s fees and commissions, minus shipping, plus or minus adjustments.
From payout to profit
The payout is what TikTok sends you. To get to profit you still take out the VAT you owe and what the products cost you.
| Line | Example |
|---|---|
| Customer paid | €42.00 |
| TikTok fees and commissions | −€13.28 |
| Payout | €28.72 |
| VAT (19%) | −€6.71 |
| Product cost | −€9.80 |
| What you keep | €12.21 |
Example figures. Try your own numbers in the profit calculator.
Common questions
Why is my payout lower than my sales? Because TikTok takes its commission, any creator commission and shipping before it pays you, and refunds come out too. The settlement shows each of those as its own line.
When does an order get settled? After it is delivered and the return window has closed. That can take weeks, so recent orders in your dashboard are still estimates.
Is VAT shown in my settlement? Usually not as a line you can use. If you are an EU-based seller, TikTok does not collect VAT on your behalf: the payout still contains the VAT you owe, and you declare it yourself. That is why VAT comes out after the payout, not before.
Try it with your numbers
Put in a month of sales and your costs, and see what you keep.