TikTok Shop
How TikTok Shop UK connects: checks before publishing, review read-back, price and stock rules, and orders rung in by webhook.
TikTok Shop is a source, a publishing target and an order channel, for shops in the United Kingdom. It is in early access: it is switched on per account. It is never a price or stock source of truth: price and stock only go to it.
Authorization
The seller signs in on TikTok's page and chooses how long MarketplaceHub may act for the shop. Creator and partner accounts are refused before anything else is read. The access token lasts seven days and is refreshed by itself. The store shows when the authorization ends, and a week before it does the store appears on Needs you.
A seller who removes the app in Seller Center is found two ways: TikTok's deauthorization notice, and a daily connection check. Either marks the store as needing a reconnect and stops its jobs.
Publishing
- Checked before it is sent. Each TikTok category's required details are checked first, including a detail that is required only once another detail has a given value, and the number formats TikTok sets per detail. A product that fails stays in MarketplaceHub with the missing detail named.
- No second copies. Every create carries an idempotency key, so a retried create cannot make a second product. A product MarketplaceHub already holds a TikTok id for is edited, not created.
- TikTok reviews every product. The result is read back: in review, live, or TikTok's reason.
- A daily cap on new products. A new shop may add a limited number of new products a day (MarketplaceHub sends at most 100). The rest wait for the next day.
- Removing deactivates. A product taken off TikTok Shop is deactivated, which can be undone. Nothing is deleted.
Price and stock
- Sent when they change: one price update and one stock update per product, carrying only the SKUs that changed.
- A price goes only to a product TikTok has made live. A product still in review waits, and gets the price once it is live.
- Stock goes to the warehouse the product was listed with. If TikTok also holds the SKU in another warehouse, stock is not sent: the update could add to a number MarketplaceHub does not own instead of replacing it.
- Prices are in pounds, VAT included.
Importing from TikTok Shop
Every product except drafts and deleted ones is read, one row per SKU, keyed by the seller SKU. A SKU without one is skipped and counted, because every later write finds a SKU by its seller SKU. A product is treated as gone only when TikTok says it is deleted.
Orders
TikTok's webhooks are a doorbell. A notice carries no order: it is checked against its signature and then starts a pull, which reads the orders. The pull also runs by itself every 10 minutes while orders come in, slowing to once an hour when it is quiet, and re-reads the last hour each time so a late change is not missed.
- One order line per SKU. Unpaid orders are skipped. An order TikTok holds in its first hour is stored as pending, and its stock is taken once.
- Who ships. An order Fulfilled by TikTok is stored with no actions. An order that ships on TikTok's own label says to ship it in Seller Center, and no shipment confirmation is offered for it.
- Ship, cancel, refund. TikTok is asked first whether the action is allowed. A cancellation is never resent; it is read back. A refund is keyed so it cannot be paid twice, and capped by TikTok's own refund calculation.
- Buyer requests. Cancel requests and returns are read in the same pull. The merchant approves or rejects them, and the decision is sent with an idempotency key.
Rate limits
TikTok's limits change over time. Each kind of call is paced at the low end of the starting points TikTok publishes, and a throttled answer is tried again later instead of failing the job.