Connect ShipStation Shipping Costs

Overview

ShipStation Direct imports the actual fulfillment cost attached to a shipping label and maps it to one or more TikTok orders in Dashboardly. This replaces an estimate with the provider cost in order profitability, P&L, Sales & Profit, and exports.

Dashboardly imports:

• outbound postage;
• label insurance;
• return-label postage; and
• return-label insurance.

Voided and refunded labels do not contribute to the total. ShipStation does not expose separate 3PL pick/pack or storage invoice charges through this label integration, so enter those costs separately when they apply.

Before You Connect

Your ShipStation order flow should preserve at least one reliable identifier:

1. Recommended: put the TikTok order ID in ShipStation custom field 1, 2, or 3.
2. Dashboardly can also use an exact TikTok order ID as the ShipStation external order ID.
3. If neither is available, Dashboardly can use one exact tracking-number match.

If one label covers a combined shipment, include every TikTok order ID in the custom fields. Dashboardly divides the postage and insurance equally across all of those orders. Every ID must match an order in the same connected shop before any part of the label cost is applied. One tracking number that ambiguously matches multiple orders still remains a conflict because it does not identify how the cost should be divided.

Create a ShipStation V2 API key before starting. The key is write-only in Dashboardly: it is encrypted when saved and cannot be displayed again. Dashboardly uses read-only label and shipment requests and never buys, creates, voids, or refunds labels.

Connect ShipStation

1. In Dashboardly, open Settings → Shipping.
2. Under ShipStation Direct, paste the V2 API key.
3. Select Connect ShipStation.
4. Dashboardly verifies the key and queues the most recent seven days in safe sync windows.
5. Use Refresh status to review the result.

Only one direct shipping provider can manage a shop at a time. Disconnect ShipHero before connecting ShipStation, or disconnect ShipStation before connecting ShipHero. Previously imported costs remain auditable after a disconnect.

Read the Status

• Applied orders: a complete provider cost is mapped to one TikTok order.
• Unmatched: no exact TikTok order could be found.
• Labels missing order match: label evidence exists but has no safe order match.
• Order conflicts: Dashboardly found the TikTok order, but cannot safely apply the cost because another shipping source owns it, currencies differ, or the order cannot accept an allocation.
• Label conflicts: one or more ShipStation labels cannot be safely matched because their identifiers are ambiguous or their currency evidence conflicts. This count is separate from order conflicts because one order can have multiple labels.
• Incomplete: at least one active label is missing required cost data.
• Voided or refunded labels: excluded provider labels retained for audit.

ShipStation Direct adds postage and insurance. For example, postage of USD 4.55 with USD 0.00 insurance produces a USD 4.55 order shipping cost. A later return label is added to the same order. A later void or approved refund removes that label from the total on the next reconciliation. If it was the final active label, Dashboardly removes the ShipStation-owned shipping cost from the order completely. Pending or rejected refund requests do not remove the cost.

For a combined label with two TikTok order IDs, a USD 4.55 postage charge is split into USD 2.28 and USD 2.27 so the allocated values still total exactly USD 4.55. With three or more orders, any remaining cents are assigned in a consistent order and the total is always preserved. Postage and insurance are divided separately for a complete audit trail.

If one TikTok order contains both FBT and seller-fulfilled items, Dashboardly uses the label tracking number to apply the ShipStation cost only to the line items shipped with that tracking number. If TikTok does not provide a distinct line-item tracking number, the cost is distributed across the order's eligible SKUs because there is no safe item-level distinction in the available data. If TikTok provides distinct package tracking but none of it matches the ShipStation label, or a matching package has no allocatable SKU, Dashboardly marks the order as a conflict instead of guessing or applying a partial product breakdown.

Sync Older History

Choose From and To, then select Sync shipping costs. One request can cover up to 93 days and is automatically divided into smaller provider-safe windows. Queue adjacent date ranges to cover older history.

Dashboardly automatically checks recent labels every 15 minutes and rechecks known labels for later voids, refunds, or corrections. This recheck also reads the shipment custom fields again. If you correct a TikTok order ID in ShipStation, Dashboardly removes the cost from the previous match and applies it to the corrected order when the next recheck succeeds.

Troubleshooting

The order is unmatched

Confirm that the ShipStation shipment custom field contains the full TikTok order ID. A Shopify order number such as 29518 is not the TikTok order ID. The TikTok ID is normally an 18–24 digit value.

If a label points to a shipment that was deleted or is no longer available in ShipStation, Dashboardly continues syncing the other labels. If the shipment's custom fields were the only reliable identifier, that label remains unmatched. Restore or recreate the shipment in ShipStation if its custom fields are still needed for matching.

A combined shipment is unmatched

Confirm that every TikTok order ID in the ShipStation custom fields is complete and belongs to the connected shop. Dashboardly does not partially apply a combined label when only some of its order IDs can be matched. After the missing order is available or the ID is corrected, the next recheck applies the equal split to all matched orders.

An order or label is a conflict

Check whether:

• the same tracking number was reused across multiple orders;
• ShipHero is still connected;
• a manual or CSV shipping adjustment already owns the order; or
• the ShipStation currency differs from the TikTok order currency.

Dashboardly never overwrites a shipping value owned by a manual entry, CSV import, or ShipHero. If ShipStation previously owned the value and its evidence becomes conflicting or incomplete, Dashboardly removes only that ShipStation-owned value until the conflict is resolved.

Pick/pack is missing

This integration reads label postage and insurance from ShipStation. Separate warehouse pick/pack, handling, and storage invoices are not label fields and must be recorded separately.