Your TikTok sales are growing. What is left?

The live session went well. Orders came in. The advertising report looks healthy. But how much of that money belongs to the business?

That is the question I want us to ask before celebrating another sales milestone. TikTok’s settlement tells you what the platform paid you. It does not, on its own, tell you what your business earned.

The costs sit in different places. Deductions appear in settlement statements, advertising in ad accounts, host pay in payroll or invoices, and product costs in inventory records. Each shows part of the picture. None shows the whole result.

What RM100 of revenue actually left

For one shop belonging to a business we work with, settled TikTok Shop charges came to RM19.41 for every RM100 of the export’s “Total Revenue” across June–August 2026. That revenue means item sales after seller-funded discounts and item refunds, matched to the same settlement records. It excludes customer-paid shipping; the export does not establish whether item prices include sales tax.

Subtract those charges and RM80.59 remains before other settlement adjustments and the costs outside this breakdown. That is not RM80.59 of profit. We have not deducted the products, advertising, hosts, packing or overheads.

Commission accounted for just over half of the recorded charges. Looking only at the commission rate would have missed the rest. Net seller shipping already accounts for customer-paid shipping and platform shipping discounts, alongside applicable return-shipping components. Do not add those components again.

Three charges worth checking before your next live.

A small basket, a PayLater checkout or a campaign day can change what a sale costs. Here is what to watch, using Malaysian guidance checked on 10 October 2026.

Commission varies by product subcategory, Marketplace or Mall status, and programme participation. Shipping depends on the applicable rate card and order circumstances. There is no single percentage here that we can honestly call “the cost of selling on TikTok”. Check the commission schedule for your products.

The people behind the sale need paying too

A live session can have several costs before the first parcel leaves the warehouse. A salaried host has payroll costs. A freelance host might charge by the hour. Your team may earn sales commission, while a marketer earns a performance incentive. These are your business arrangements, not universal TikTok charges.

Record the hours worked, the sales measure used, the commission rate and any adjustments for cancellations or refunds in the actual agreement. Distinguish your team’s incentives from creator affiliate commission already recorded in settlement.

If a marketer’s incentive depends on ROAS, include that incentive when assessing the campaign’s result. ROAS compares attributed revenue with advertising spend. It does not deduct stock, platform fees, host pay or bonuses. A better ROAS can coexist with less money left if those other costs rise.

Advertising needs its own check. The historical fee breakdown above does not include advertising spend. Ads may be billed separately or paid through a settlement arrangement. An empty advertising line in one source does not prove that no advertising ran. Match the ad records and count the expense once.

See what is left, step by step.

Use the same period and scope across the calculation. Settlement month and order month are not interchangeable. Match the related sales and costs, explain timing differences, and label unresolved amounts instead of treating them as zero.

For shared staff or warehouse costs, show the allocation rule. A change in that rule can change the reported channel result without changing how the business performed.

Overlooked is not the same as hidden

A cost can be documented and still be absent from the owner’s working calculation. That is different from proving a platform concealed it. The practical problem is that owners need to connect several records to understand one result.

Before increasing the next campaign’s budget, ask what remains after the products, the platform, the advertising and the people who made the sale? Then ask whether that contribution covers the business’s fixed costs.

Related reading A good ROAS can still lose money.

Policy guidance checked 10 October 2026. The PayLater change is announced but not yet effective on that date. Historical figures come from an anonymised, owner-authorised evidence pack reconciled to TikTok settled exports by the data team; they are not a representative SME sample. No complete campaign-profit figure is claimed. Confirm current account-specific rates, waivers and programme terms in Seller Center before budgeting.