Client identity anonymized; numbers are real and verifiable in settled statements.
The setup
A consumer brand doing strong volume on TikTok Shop, fulfilled through FBT. Healthy dashboards, growing sales, an ops team that was on top of the visible stuff. They didn't come to us with a problem — they came because we offered a free audit and the downside was zero.
This is the detail worth dwelling on: there was no symptom. No alarming dashboard, no obvious hole in the P&L. Just margins that ran a little below model, the way everyone's do.
What the audit found
Within 24 hours, the audit surfaced claimable money across the categories we always check:
FBT inventory discrepancies. Units received short against inbound shipments, units lost or damaged in the network — none auto-reimbursed, all claimable against documented inventory value.
Returns that vanished. Customer returns on FBT orders that neither re-entered sellable inventory nor triggered the reimbursement TikTok's own policy promises when a unit can't be restocked. The single largest bucket, as it is in most FBT audits we run.
Logistics-caused refund losses. Refunds whose root cause was a shipping failure — losses that belong under TikTok's coverage policy, up to retail value, rather than on the seller's P&L.
Statement errors. Deduction lines that didn't survive scrutiny.
(What we won't publish: the reconciliation methodology, the claim sequencing, or the documentation patterns that get approvals through. That's the work. The findings above tell you where your money is — finding it is either your ops calendar or ours.)
The result
$30,800 paid back across roughly 30 days, landing in settled statements as approved claims. For context against the benchmarks we've published: that's consistent with the upper end of the 1–3%-of-GMV leak range — the brand was FBT-heavy in a high-return category, which is exactly the profile that leaks hardest.
Just as important: a chunk of what we found in week one was days from expiring under the 60-day FBT claim window. The same audit run a month later recovers meaningfully less — not because the money wasn't owed, but because the calendar would have erased it.
What this means for your shop
Three takeaways that generalize:
Healthy-looking accounts leak. This brand's ops were good. The leak categories — receiving shortfalls, vanished returns, root-cause refund attribution — are invisible unless something reconciles them specifically.
The leak scales with FBT usage and return rates. If you're FBT-heavy in beauty, fashion, supplements, or home goods, your expected number is at the high end. (Size your leak →)
Timing is the whole game. Every month unaudited, the oldest 30 days of claims expire permanently. The cost of "we'll look into it next quarter" is precise and nonrefundable.
The same audit, free, on your account
24 hours, no commitment, filed within TikTok's ToS if you proceed, success-fee only. Worst case: you learn your account is airtight. Best case: you find your own $30K.
Get your free TikTok Shop audit →
FAQ
Is $30,800 typical for a TikTok Shop audit? No single number is typical — recoveries scale with GMV, FBT usage, and return rates. The well-supported planning range is 1–3% of GMV leaking annually; another client recovered $13,900 in one month at smaller scale.
How long does recovery take? The audit takes 24 hours; approved reimbursements typically post to settled statements within about 5 business days of approval, so meaningful recoveries land within the first month.
Will filing claims put my account at risk? Claims filed through Seller Center within TikTok's terms of service are the system working as designed. That's the only way we file.
What if the audit finds nothing? Then you pay nothing and you've confirmed your account is tight — which, at zero cost, is worth knowing.
