How Data Import Works

Overview

Once you connect your TikTok Shop, Dashboardly automatically begins importing your data. This process pulls in your products, orders, financial statements, refunds, and more so that your dashboard, profit and loss reports, and all other analytics pages are populated with accurate numbers.

You do not need to do anything manually -- imports happen in the background.

How the Import Process Works

Dashboardly imports your data in a specific sequence. Each stage must finish before the next one begins, because later stages depend on earlier data.

Import Stages (in order)

Products -- Your product catalog: names, images, SKUs, and variants.
Product Details -- Extended information like descriptions, categories, and pricing.
Inventory -- Current stock levels and warehouse information (including FBT/Fulfilled by TikTok warehouses).
Orders -- The order history available to your authorized shop, with line items, quantities, and statuses.
Financial Statements -- TikTok settlement data, including available revenue, fees, adjustments, shipping amounts, and payment status. A statement marked processing or failed is not proof of a bank deposit.
Refunds -- Return and refund records tied back to the original orders.
Analytics Calculation -- After all raw data is imported, Dashboardly calculates your metrics: revenue, profit, margins, COGS, and everything else shown on your dashboards.

If TikTok later corrects an order's product or SKU, Dashboardly refreshes that order's product-level results. A sale and its costs can move between product rows without changing the shop-wide total. When Seller SKU names are reused, compare products by their TikTok Product ID and SKU ID.

Product category reports use the category that TikTok last returned for each product. A product with no confirmed category appears under Uncategorized; Dashboardly does not substitute a suggested category. For a shop connected before category reporting was introduced, support may need to refresh product details before its full category hierarchy is available in exports.

Placeholder Products for Catalog-Unlinked Orders

When an imported order line has no TikTok catalog product ID, Dashboardly creates a placeholder product so the sale is not dropped from product-level analytics. This recovery condition does not, by itself, identify the sale as LIVE, auction, or an official Temporary Listing. No action is needed on your part.

Why This Order Matters

Refund records need to reference existing orders, so orders must be imported first.
Financial statements contain fee breakdowns that get matched to specific orders.
Analytics calculations need all the raw data before they can produce accurate summaries.

Tracking Import Progress

Your imports run automatically in the background. Open Settings > Shops to check that your shop remains connected. If your figures stop updating or you need help checking an import, contact the team through Settings > Support. The first-import completion email follows the conditions explained below.

To help support check an import, include:

Shop -- The name and market of the affected shop.
Date range -- The reporting dates whose figures need attention.
Page -- The Dashboard or report where you see the problem.
Problem -- The missing or outdated figures and any visible error message.

Orders that are still unpaid or on hold appear with their TikTok status, but they do not count as missing paid-order analytics in the import readiness check. When TikTok later advances an order to a sale-eligible status, the regular sync rechecks it and updates your analytics. A paid order that is missing required analytics still keeps the readiness check open.

First-Import Completion Email

Dashboardly sends a one-time service email when the first full import finishes and meaningful shop data is ready. The message is sent only if the import finishes within 48 hours of connecting the shop. We do not send a delayed completion email for an older import backlog.

A new or empty shop can still complete its import successfully without this email. If data becomes available later, a new eligible full import can complete the notification while the shop is still inside the 48-hour window.

If TikTok Ads is connected, the completion message also waits for the exact shop in that Business Center, its historical campaign and creative data, and the available ad-spend adjustments to finish importing. A temporary TikTok permission, identity, or rate-limit delay therefore keeps the import in progress and retries automatically instead of sending a premature "ready" message. Shops that have not connected TikTok Ads are not delayed by this check.

How Long Does the First Import Take?

There is no fixed completion time. Duration depends on the amount of data available to your shop, TikTok's response time, and any background checks that must finish before reports are ready. Orders may appear before their financial statements because TikTok generates statements separately. Dashboardly can show a statement only after TikTok makes it available and it is synchronized.

The first import checks the available historical data. Later updates refresh new or changed information in the background; different data types may become visible at different times. If data appears to be missing, check the shop under Settings > Shops and contact us through Settings > Support with the affected shop and date range.

Once the data checks for an imported period pass, Dashboardly continues loading older history while preparing report views in the background. Report preparation does not require you to restart the import. Figures can still change as the remaining periods and TikTok settlement details arrive; wait for the required period to finish importing before treating its report as complete.

Import Reliability

Dashboardly is built to handle imports of any size reliably:

Support-requested affiliate history uses periods of up to 90 days. If support reruns a date range that includes Affiliate orders, a longer range must be split into periods of 90 days or less. An unsupported range is rejected before the requested import starts, so it cannot stop halfway through and leave later stages unfinished. A rerun that excludes Affiliate orders can use a longer period.
Temporary database timeouts pause background recovery. Dashboardly waits before checking unfinished recurring work again. Confirmed progress stays saved, and you do not need to restart your import.
Repeated return notifications preserve saved data. If TikTok reports the same return status with an older timestamp, Dashboardly rechecks it before treating the notification as already observed. It does not overwrite saved return data with that older snapshot.
Automatic credential refresh. Dashboardly refreshes API credentials during long imports. Temporary authorization problems can still delay an import, so contact support if your connected shop stops updating.
Archived catalog items do not block the import. TikTok can return a deleted or inactive product without its variant details. Dashboardly preserves that product's lifecycle status and continues the import, while incomplete data for an active product still retries instead of being treated as complete.
Delayed Inventory refreshes keep their place. During busy periods, Inventory can show its previous completed update while the next refresh waits. Dashboardly preserves that pending refresh and its place in the background queue, so newer order and statement work cannot continually push it back. Processing resumes automatically when capacity and data-readiness checks allow it.
Inventory calculation errors do not publish a partial refresh. If a SKU cannot be calculated or an Inventory refresh cannot be saved completely, that refresh leaves the previously saved figures in place instead of marking an incomplete update successful. The pending refresh remains unfinished for a later retry; it does not require disconnecting your shop.
Automatic retries for marketing data. If a temporary network error occurs while importing your TikTok Ads data, the import retries automatically. You do not need to do anything.
LIVE history follows the import period. For shops with LIVE analytics enabled and the required TikTok permission, Dashboardly imports available LIVE sessions for each historical period. Ongoing updates include the current UTC reporting day; TikTok may still publish that day's performance later.
Business Center access is rechecked automatically. If a previously saved ad account no longer has permission, or a complete sync does not expose the connected shop, Dashboardly checks the advertiser accounts currently authorized by TikTok and safely refreshes the saved connection. If the current authorization still does not include that exact shop, the marketing import remains action required instead of appearing complete; reconnect TikTok Ads with the Business Center that manages the shop.
Complete advertising coverage. When your advertiser maps to one connected shop, Dashboardly imports eligible standard Auction/PSA campaign spend alongside GMV Max activity. Historical Auction/PSA spend fills in through its own saved background checkpoint, so an older completed GMV Max import cannot hide missing standard-campaign history. TikTok may return a reporting day with a midnight timestamp; Dashboardly normalizes that value to the correct calendar day and refreshes the affected P&L day automatically.
Older hourly advertising detail catches up in scheduled batches. A temporary pause keeps the batch's existing limits and preserves completed days. Dashboardly waits for every required report page before replacing a day's saved detail, so an interrupted fetch does not publish part of a day. You do not need to restart the import.
Campaign history does not wait behind ad-credit details. When TikTok exposes the exact shop and campaign reports but temporarily omits the Business Center ownership details needed for ad credits, Dashboardly continues importing the available campaign and product history. It safely checks other Business Centers authorized for that advertiser, keeps retrying the missing cost details from the saved checkpoint, and never restarts or holds back the independent report history.
One advertiser's backoff does not block another shop. Historical TikTok Ads creative imports are ordered fairly among shops that are ready to run. If one advertiser is waiting for TikTok's retry window, other eligible shops continue importing instead of waiting behind it.
First-import analytics has protected capacity. Dashboardly reserves a separate processing slot for the final analytics calculation of newly connected shops. Large background recalculations continue in their own lane, so an older busy shop cannot consume all capacity needed to finish a new shop's import.
Finishing a first import takes priority over routine upkeep. After the source history is imported, its final required calculations are scheduled ahead of recurring analytics maintenance. If maintenance is already preparing that shop, Dashboardly keeps the same saved progress and gives that work the completion priority instead of starting a duplicate calculation.
Heavy historical calculations use smaller turns, light ones use larger turns. Dashboardly sizes the next historical calculation period from the time the previous successful period needed. Slow periods become smaller. Quick periods can double from one turn to the next, up to about three months of history in one turn, and time spent waiting for a free processing slot does not make the next period smaller. Within a turn, days that take only a moment are calculated one after another for a few seconds before the turn gives way to other waiting work, instead of giving way after every single day. This shares processing time among waiting shops without skipping required dates or marking incomplete reports ready; it is not a guaranteed completion time.
Older calculations keep their turn. New imports and fresh updates remain prioritized, while older pending analytics calculations receive bounded opportunities to continue. You do not need to restart an import to move older calculations forward; they resume from their saved progress when processing is safe. Work that is waiting to retry keeps its place without holding unused processing capacity away from other eligible work.
Historical order checks keep their place while waiting. Checks for orders containing multiple products or variants save their progress in small steps. Pending checks retain their next-turn priority through temporary processing delays, without holding unused capacity away from other work. When capacity allows, several small checks can run in one short processing turn before sharing time with other waiting shops. Each completed check is saved independently, so an interruption does not restart earlier checks. Completed checks share their processing turn with preparation or completeness checks for the remaining records, so a busy import can continue without waiting for a separate turn just to reread saved progress.
Completed settlement history is checked in small steps too. Dashboardly saves progress even when a section of your settlement history needs no corrections. When capacity allows, several short checks can run in one limited processing turn, saving each step independently before sharing time with other waiting work. Large stretches of already-imported history therefore do not hold up the next safe opportunity to process other waiting work. Preparing and saving order-level fee, tax, and shipping details follow these same capacity checks. If capacity is temporarily unavailable, including during final checks, the import keeps its confirmed progress and remains pending until it can safely resume. Each resumed step continues the next unfinished part: for example, final tax checks can resume after order details are saved without repeating those saved details. You do not need to restart the import between these steps.
Interrupted settlement details are retried, not skipped. If saving an order's fee, tax, or shipping breakdown is interrupted, Dashboardly keeps the last confirmed progress and the details needed for another attempt. It does not mark that unfinished step complete or discard those details just because some records were already saved.
Temporary saving conflicts preserve confirmed progress. If another update briefly prevents order details from being saved, Dashboardly retries that unfinished step for a limited period, then pauses it until a later safe attempt. This wait does not spend the import's error-retry allowance or mark those details complete. Other errors still require their normal recovery checks; this is not a guaranteed completion time.
Missing settlement sources receive a targeted repair. When an order is waiting for a missing financial statement, Dashboardly verifies that statement's complete settlement detail before resuming the saved order checks. The source repair does not repeat the shop's entire product-variant history. Required order checks remain pending until they actually finish; the repair does not mark them complete early.
A targeted repair does not hold up the rest of your import. Sometimes a targeted repair verifies a financial statement shortly before your historical import reaches the same statement. The import then accepts that verified statement instead of reading it a second time, takes over the fee, tax, and shipping details saved with it, and continues with its own product-level calculations for those orders. If the statement cannot be verified, the import keeps waiting and does not mark it complete. You do not need to restart the import.
Missing figures after a product is relisted are checked in small steps. If you delete a listing and relist the same product, Dashboardly checks affected orders for missing calculations and schedules repairs automatically. While an earlier active listing has the same product name and every saved Seller SKU of the newer listing, including variants later removed, Dashboardly hides the duplicate and attributes its orders and costs to the earlier product. If the earlier listing is later deleted, or the newer listing's name or SKU identity changes, Dashboardly reassesses which listing should be visible. Orders already repaired keep their recorded product attribution; later orders follow the current listing identity. Large order histories share processing time with other shops, and an interruption preserves completed checks. Later checks revisit older orders when their data changes, so you do not need to restart the full import to recover those figures on your Dashboard or Profit & Loss page.
Large ongoing syncs share processing time. Once an order, affiliate, statement, unsettled-payment, or refund sync has used its turn, its next attempt waits behind eligible work that was already waiting. After the required order updates, independent data types take turns within your shop too, so a long affiliate or settlement update does not repeatedly block pending refund or unsettled-payment updates. When the orders needed for an older period are already saved, financial updates for that period can continue without waiting for every newer order update. Large affiliate updates pause between saved batches of records while still covering the full 90-day update window. A large settlement sync also makes processing time available to other eligible work while it waits for detailed settlement, product-variant records, or missing per-order settlement details. These waiting repairs keep their saved place without creating another copy of the same pending work each time the sync resumes. Temporary capacity delays preserve saved progress, including after an interruption. Taking a turn does not mark data complete: unfinished periods remain pending and resume from saved progress.
Interrupted imports recover automatically. If import processing becomes unavailable, Dashboardly checks for unfinished work and restores processing capacity only when it is safe. Imports waiting to start keep their place, and interrupted imports resume from saved progress instead of restarting their entire history. If processing has already recovered or safety checks are incomplete, Dashboardly holds off on replacement. You do not need to disconnect and reconnect your shop.
Capacity waits do not increase error-retry delays. If an import or historical settlement check encounters a temporary error after waiting for processing capacity, its retry delay depends on actual failed attempts, not how many times it waited. Repeated errors still use increasing delays, and the import keeps its saved progress.
Import status support. If an import appears delayed, contact the team through Settings > Support so they can check the current stage and any action your shop needs.
Completion verifies your imported history. Dashboardly checks that every imported historical period has finished its final calculations and is ready for Profit & Loss reporting before marking the first import complete or sending the completion email. Temporary calculation gaps retry automatically and remain in progress until they are repaired.
Historical report preparation can continue afterward. Once the imported data and required calculations pass their checks, preparing cached report views for faster loading can continue in the background. A historical report may still refresh when you first open it; you do not need to restart the import.
Reporting-timezone changes use the new calendar. After you change your shop's reporting timezone, Dashboardly checks that the required daily calculations are ready for that calendar. Calculations prepared for the previous timezone do not count as ready for the new one. Your imported orders are preserved while the day and month groupings are prepared again.
Profit & Loss views are prepared independently. When Dashboardly checks your imported history, it schedules preparation for every required Profit & Loss view. One view waiting for an update does not prevent the others from being scheduled. Each view keeps its own progress and may finish refreshing after the imported data passes its checks.
Connected marketing history is part of completion. When TikTok Ads is connected, Dashboardly verifies the exact Business Center store, historical campaign and creative checkpoints, and settled ad-spend allocations before sending the first-import email. Missing recovery jobs are recreated automatically; a shop without TikTok Ads remains non-blocking.
New activity does not reset completed history. Once a historical period has finished importing and its Profit & Loss figures are ready, newer orders and updates are handled by the ongoing sync. They do not force the completed historical period to restart or keep the first import waiting indefinitely.
Delayed order updates recover automatically. If background order processing is interrupted, Dashboardly resumes it automatically. During catch-up, orders that have not reached Dashboardly yet are handled ahead of repeated updates for orders already present. Repeated updates are consolidated into one refresh, and Dashboardly checks TikTok's latest order status before saving it so an older notification cannot overwrite the current status.
High-volume order history is checkpointed in smaller windows. Dashboardly automatically narrows dense historical order periods into bounded time windows and resumes from the last saved page if a worker is interrupted. A single unusually busy day therefore does not block the rest of the first import or require you to restart it manually.
Large historical calculations stay inside their current window. Final fee, refund, and subsidy checks are limited to the same bounded historical period currently being calculated. Dashboardly does not repeatedly scan a large shop's entire lifetime for every period, so newer shops can keep progressing while a high-volume history is materialized.
Repeated background repair requests are consolidated. If a long-running fulfillment materialization is retried or rediscovered by the health monitor, Dashboardly keeps one durable owner for that shop and merges later requests into it. Duplicate repair jobs cannot crowd out statement syncs or a newly connected shop, and saved projection progress is preserved across retries. If a disconnected shop is permanently removed, its obsolete repair owner is also retired automatically instead of retrying forever.
FBT updates are checked against current inventory. Dashboardly verifies TikTok's current stock across the relevant warehouses before saving an FBT update. A change to available or reserved stock does not always create a physical stock-movement record. Older notifications are consolidated behind newer saved notifications, and temporary failures retry within a limited recovery budget. If that budget is exhausted, support needs to investigate; automatic retries do not continue indefinitely.
Scheduled cancellation does not interrupt paid access. If you schedule a subscription cancellation, an import already in progress and your ongoing TikTok Shop data sync continue until the effective end of your trial or billing period. Data flow stops only after that access period ends or if the shop authorization becomes unusable.

Data Completeness

If some orders cannot be saved during an import, Dashboardly keeps that part of the import incomplete and retries it. Orders already saved are preserved; the retry fills the missing records without creating duplicate orders.

When a settlement-detail import resumes, newly pending orders are added without replacing the groups of orders already saved. For example, if details for two orders are complete and a third becomes available, Dashboardly keeps those two completed results and tracks the third separately. The import remains pending until the required source records are confirmed complete.

An order with a completed refund or replacement can need a separate check of TikTok's order-level settlement details, even when it contains only one product or variant. An earlier saved summary does not complete that pending check. Dashboardly preserves the saved summary while the required details are checked; you do not need to disconnect your shop or restart its full history.

Fee and tax breakdowns for your orders are recovered automatically when TikTok data arrives late or was initially incomplete. This means your Profit & Loss calculations become complete sooner, without you needing to trigger a manual sync.

When Dashboardly refreshes an order's SKU settlement breakdown, it saves the replacement details together. If the refreshed details cannot be saved completely, the previous breakdown stays available and the unfinished update retries. This recovery preserves TikTok's original settlement amounts; you do not need to restart the import or change your product costs.

TikTok issues financial statements by UTC day. Dashboardly checks the complete statement day during ongoing syncs and revisits recent statements when TikTok publishes or changes them later. Refund amounts and fees appear in reports after their statement and transaction details have been imported and verified.

Dashboardly verifies the full settlement breakdown behind each financial statement before treating that detail as complete. If TikTok initially returns only part of a statement, Dashboardly retries the missing detail and confirms the final item count and amount. TikTok's official statement total remains the source of truth, so any confirmed difference stays visible instead of being silently rewritten.

Cash Flow uses TikTok's bank payout date for money received and keeps it separate from the time a customer paid for an order. Dashboardly automatically recovers missing historical payout dates, order payment times, and statement links when TikTok provides them. It does not invent a date or link when TikTok has not supplied one.

Ongoing Data Sync

After the initial import, Dashboardly keeps your data up to date through:

Webhooks -- TikTok sends notifications for changes such as orders, refunds, and FBT inventory. Dashboardly processes received notifications in the background; TikTok response delays and retries can affect when changes become visible.
Periodic Syncs -- Background syncs revisit orders, affiliate orders, statements, unsettled transactions, and refunds. These checks do not provide a scheduled FBT stock refresh or guarantee recovery of every missing notification.

This means your Dashboard and reports update throughout the day without you needing to do anything.

If an ongoing sync is interrupted, it finishes its saved period before moving on to newer updates. Newer updates remain pending separately; finishing an older period does not mark those newer updates complete. Dashboardly confirms completion only after every required step for that period has finished successfully.

If another sync is already processing your shop, the waiting sync keeps its saved progress and resumes when it can safely continue. Repeated waits do not abandon the unfinished period or require you to start another import.

If a newer sync has already completed the same settlement detail, Dashboardly can verify and reuse that result for an older sync that has not saved any of its own detail. This avoids repeated attempts to replace newer data. Partial or unverified work stays pending, and the older period is completed only after all its remaining required steps succeed.

Your order allowance and overage cap control billing and in-app visibility, not durable data synchronization. After you use all included orders, ongoing sync continues while flex charges apply at your plan's rate. After the overage cap is exhausted, Dashboardly keeps saving new orders securely but holds those post-cap records from customer-visible results. No further overage charges accrue while the cap is exhausted. Dashboard, Profit & Loss, Sales & Profit, and Orders remain available with the orders that were visible before the cap was exhausted; held orders do not enter their order counts, sales, profit, product results, or exports. A new billing allowance can resume normal usage accounting, but it does not reveal held records. They are released only after you upgrade to a plan with enough capacity, activate an approved custom plan, or support approves a release.

How Often Does FBT Stock Update?

FBT stock updates when TikTok sends an inventory-change notification for your authorized FBT shop and Dashboardly verifies the latest inventory. It is not refreshed on a fixed 12-hour schedule, and a change is not guaranteed to appear instantly.

Dashboardly automatically retries temporary processing failures for received notifications, within a limited retry budget. These retries do not recreate a notification that TikTok did not deliver.

If a particular SKU appears out of date, contact support with your shop name, TikTok SKU ID, and the current quantity shown in Seller Center. A screenshot and the time you checked it help us compare the same item and update.

Manual Refresh / Re-Import

Regular syncs automatically pick up new and updated TikTok Shop data. If you need help refreshing data after a change in TikTok Seller Center:

Open Settings > Shops and check the affected shop's connection.
Note the shop and reporting dates that need attention.
Contact the team through Settings > Support to check or arrange a refresh.

A refresh keeps your existing data and updates or adds records. You do not need to disconnect and reconnect your shop to request a data refresh.

Tips

Do not disconnect and reconnect your shop to "fix" data issues. Contact support if the automatic sync does not resolve the problem.
Contact support if your numbers seem outdated. Include the affected shop and date range so the team can check the import.
Large shops may see partial data on the Dashboard while the import is still running. Wait for the import to complete before evaluating your numbers.
Products can lag behind the summary during an import. On Sales & Profit, the summary at the top can already show sales while your products are still being imported. In that case the product table says "Your products are still importing" instead of showing an empty table, and the products appear as the import progresses.

Common Issues

Import stuck at a stage

Occasionally, an import can stall due to temporary TikTok API rate limits. Dashboardly automatically retries with increasing delays. If an import has been stuck for more than 2 hours, contact the team through Settings > Support and include the affected shop.

Import completed but data looks incomplete

Check whether TikTok Seller Center shows data for the same date range. Some metrics (like financial statements) are only available after TikTok settles them, which can take 7-14 days. See Data Delays for more details.

"Import failed" error

This usually means TikTok's API returned an error. Common causes:

Your authorization token expired (reconnect the shop in Settings > Shops).
TikTok's servers were temporarily unavailable (the import will automatically retry).
Your shop was suspended or restricted on TikTok's side.

If the problem persists after reconnecting, contact support.