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)

1. Products -- Your product catalog: names, images, SKUs, and variants.
2. Product Details -- Extended information like descriptions, categories, and pricing.
3. Inventory -- Current stock levels and warehouse information (including FBT/Fulfilled by TikTok warehouses).
4. Orders -- Your complete order history with line items, quantities, and statuses.
5. Financial Statements -- TikTok settlement data showing the exact amounts deposited to your bank account, including fees, taxes, shipping costs, and platform charges.
6. Refunds -- Return and refund records tied back to the original orders.
7. Analytics Calculation -- After all raw data is imported, Dashboardly calculates your metrics: revenue, profit, margins, COGS, and everything else shown on your dashboards.

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

You can monitor the progress of any import in Settings > Import History.

Each import shows:

• Status -- Whether the import is running, completed, or encountered an error.
• Stage -- Which step of the import is currently active.
• Progress -- A percentage indicator for the current stage.
• Duration -- How long the import has been running.

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.

For agency accounts, the message also waits until the imported shop is visible under its agency client. If you connected the shop before creating the client, Dashboardly automatically links them when there is one exact client-name and shop-name match in your agency account. It does not guess when there is no exact match or when more than one match exists. In that case, finish the connection from the client in Agency Settings or contact support. The same 48-hour limit still applies, so an older completion does not trigger a delayed email.

How Long Does the First Import Take?

The duration of your first import depends on the volume of data in your shop:

The first import pulls your entire order history. After that, regular syncs only pull new and updated data, which is much faster.

Import Reliability

Dashboardly is built to handle imports of any size reliably:

• Automatic credential refresh. For large shops, imports can take 1 to 3 hours. Dashboardly automatically refreshes your API credentials during long imports, so they complete successfully without authorization errors.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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. 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.
• Accurate import status. The import status shown in Settings > Import History updates in near real-time and reflects the actual state of your import within minutes.
• 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.
• 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. Your import remains in progress until all required views are ready.
• 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 inventory remains safe across multiple warehouses. Dashboardly waits for TikTok's inventory change record and then verifies the current quantity for every warehouse included in the update before saving it. An unchanged warehouse does not hold up the update, and an older notification cannot overwrite newer FBT inventory. When TikTok sends several updates for the same FBT item, Dashboardly consolidates superseded snapshots, keeps an audit record for each notification, and processes the newest durable state. If TikTok's authoritative inventory snapshot is still delayed after the normal retry window, Dashboardly keeps the update pending and retries it safely instead of dropping it.
• 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.

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.

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 real-time notifications when orders are placed, shipped, or refunded. Dashboardly processes these immediately.
• Periodic Syncs -- Regular background imports ensure nothing is missed, even if a webhook was delayed.

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.

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.

Manual Refresh / Re-Import

If you ever need to trigger a fresh import (for example, after making changes in TikTok Seller Center), you can:

1. Go to Settings > Accounts.
2. Find the shop you want to refresh.
3. Click the Sync button.

This starts a new import cycle that pulls in the latest data. It does not delete your existing data -- it updates and adds to it.

Tips

• Do not disconnect and reconnect your shop to "fix" data issues. A manual sync is the correct approach.
• Check Import History if your numbers seem outdated. If an import failed partway through, you will see the error there.
• 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.

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, try triggering a manual sync from Settings > Accounts.

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 > Accounts).
• 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.