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Dashboardly vs TikTok Seller Center: What You Are Missing
TikTok Seller Center shows GMV but not real profit. Discover the metrics Seller Center hides and how Dashboardly fills the gaps.
Most TikTok Shop sellers get their Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) wrong — and it is costing them thousands in miscalculated profits and incorrect tax filings. If you are using just your factory price as COGS, you are overstating your margins by 30-50%.
This guide covers everything you need to know about calculating accurate COGS for your TikTok Shop business.
Accurate TikTok Shop COGS = product cost + inbound freight + duties + FBT inbound fees + packaging + per-unit overhead allocation. Missing any of these under-reports true cost by 10–25% on average.
Key takeaways:
Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) represents the total direct cost of producing or acquiring the products you sell. It is the first and largest deduction from your revenue, and getting it right is critical for understanding your true profit margin.
Your COGS should reflect the full landed cost of each product:
| Component | Example | Often Forgotten? |
|---|---|---|
| Factory/supplier price | $3.50 per unit | No |
| Ocean freight (per unit) | $0.60-$1.20 | Yes |
| Air freight (per unit) | $2.00-$5.00 | Sometimes |
| Import duties & tariffs | 0-25% of declared value | Yes |
| Customs brokerage fees | $0.10-$0.30 per unit | Yes |
| Product packaging | $0.15-$0.50 | Sometimes |
| Quality inspection | $0.05-$0.15 | Yes |
| Insurance | $0.02-$0.10 | Yes |
| Component | Cost |
|---|---|
| Factory price (FOB Shenzhen) | $3.50 |
| Ocean freight (per unit, 2000-unit order) | $0.85 |
| Import duty (6.5%) | $0.23 |
| Customs broker fee | $0.12 |
| Custom packaging | $0.35 |
| Inspection | $0.08 |
| Total Landed Cost | $5.13 |
Notice the landed cost ($5.13) is 47% higher than the factory price ($3.50). Using $3.50 as your COGS would overstate your margin by nearly 5 percentage points.
If you sell multiple products, each SKU needs its own COGS. A blended average across all products hides which items are profitable and which are money losers.
Pro tip: Your best-selling product might actually be your least profitable. Per-SKU COGS tracking reveals the truth.
When you buy inventory at different prices over time, you need to choose an accounting method:
COGS is your largest tax deduction. On your Schedule C, COGS is deducted from gross receipts before calculating taxable income. Understating COGS means you pay more tax than you should.
Dashboardly lets you set COGS per SKU and automatically calculates your true gross margin and net profit in real time. No spreadsheets, no guesswork.
Enter your landed costs once. Dashboardly calculates accurate margins on every order, automatically.
Start Free TrialCOGS (Cost of Goods Sold) is the direct per-unit cost to produce or acquire a product sold on TikTok Shop. It includes supplier unit cost, inbound freight to the FBT warehouse, import duties, and any per-unit packaging inserts. It excludes TikTok fees, ad spend, and overhead — those are separate line items in a full P&L.
COGS per unit = Supplier Unit Cost + Inbound Freight per Unit + Import Duty per Unit + Inbound Packaging per Unit. Divide total container freight by units in that container. Add the full CIF landed cost before a single unit moves to FBT.
No — FBT is a per-order fulfillment fee ($2.86–$3.58 per unit), not a per-unit production cost. It belongs in fulfillment cost, not COGS. Lumping them together distorts gross margin and breaks benchmarking against industry standards.
Every supplier invoice cycle, and on any freight rate change. For sellers on fixed-price supplier contracts, quarterly is enough. For sellers sourcing from Alibaba with variable quotes, re-cost every replenishment. Stale COGS is the #1 cause of phantom-profit reports.
Using list price instead of actual invoice price (ignores volume discounts), forgetting duties on imports (~10–25% for most categories), excluding inbound freight (can be 8–15% of unit cost), and allocating container freight by count when items have different volumes. Each error individually can shift reported margin 3–8 points.
Commissions are a percentage of GMV, not of COGS. A 25% commission on a product with 40% COGS leaves 35% for all other costs — referral fees, ads, returns, and profit. Pushing commission to 30% on a 50% COGS product mathematically guarantees loss before any ad spend.
Explore expert tips, actionable guides, and proven strategies to help you track profits, optimize inventory, and scale your TikTok Shop success
