"We go live on TikTok Shop in three weeks. My forecast has a sales line, a cost of goods line and a break even in month two. Every founder I speak to says the first quarter is where the cash disappears. What should a 90 day forecast actually look like for a sports brand?"
Here is the direct answer. A 90 day TikTok Shop forecast is three linked schedules, not one. What the platform will let you sell. What you can afford to ship. When the money actually reaches your bank. Get the third one wrong and a profitable quarter still leaves you £75,592 short of cash.
Put numbers on it. An illustrative sports brand launches with a £68 average order value and takes 450 orders in month one, 950 in month two and 1,600 in month three. That is £204,000 of gross sales in 90 days. After returns and VAT it is £129,200 of net revenue, and after every cost it is £13,111 of operating profit. On day 90 you are £75,592 out of pocket. Both numbers are correct. The gap between them is the forecast.
Every figure below is a synthetic example, not a client's books. The platform rates are checkable against TikTok's policy, the tax rules against HMRC's.
The Short Version
A 90 day forecast is a cash forecast with a sales forecast attached. Three schedules, one page each.
One: the ceiling. Your probation status sets the maximum number of orders you can receive in a day. That number, not your marketing plan, is the top of the model while you are in probation.
Two: the floor. Stock, postage and ad spend leave the bank before the platform pays you anything. The floor is the cash you need to survive the gap.
Three: the gap itself. A new seller on the introductory settlement period is paid 31 days after delivery, not 31 days after the sale. Everything else in the model sits between those two dates.
What A 90 Day Forecast Is Actually For
Most launch forecasts answer one question: will this be profitable? The harder question is whether you can fund the profit while it is still owed to you.
A sports brand launch is a working capital event before it is a trading event. You buy stock in one month, sell it in another, and get paid in a third. Your bank account does not smooth that into 90 days.
If your spreadsheet has a revenue row at the top and a profit row at the bottom with nothing in between, it is not a forecast. It is a wish with formatting.
Constraint One: The Probation Cap Sets Your Ceiling
Every new TikTok Shop starts in probation, and probation is not a penalty. It is a daily order cap while the platform decides whether you can fulfil reliably.
TikTok's own probation programme sets the caps by tier. At Beginner you can receive up to 30 orders a day and list up to 100 products. At Standard it is 50 orders a day and 200 products. At Premium it is 100 orders a day and 1,000 products. At Pro there is no cap, and you have graduated.
Put those caps against the plan. Four hundred and fifty orders in month one is 15 a day, comfortably inside Beginner. Nine hundred and fifty in month two is nearly 32 a day, which needs Standard. Sixteen hundred in month three is just over 53 a day, which needs Premium.
Your forecast therefore has three hidden dependencies. You need to reach Standard by about week five, and Premium by about week nine, or month two and month three do not happen at the volume you have written down. You also need 30 delivered orders in the past 60 calendar days before you get a Shop Performance Score. That score, your GMV and probation status unlock faster settlement later.
There is no fixed timeline for graduation; the tiers unlock by completing tasks in the Seller Centre. Review that assumption weekly; it is not a date to pencil in.
Constraint Two: The Fee Stack And The Return Rate
Most founders model TikTok's commission and stop. The commission is 9% of net sales plus any shipping the customer pays plus platform discounts, less refunds. On a £68 order with free delivery TikTok deducts £6.12. If you are VAT registered you reclaim £1.02 of that, so the real cost is £5.10.
Here is the full stack on the same order.
| Per kept order | £ |
|---|---|
| Selling price, VAT included | 68.00 |
| VAT at 20% | 11.33 |
| Net sale | 56.67 |
| Product landed cost | 19.50 |
| Write off on returned stock | 1.23 |
| Commission, net of VAT | 5.10 |
| Shipped by Seller fee, net of VAT | 0.55 |
| Postage | 4.34 |
| Affiliate commission | 2.38 |
| Returns processing | 1.18 |
| Contribution | 22.38 |
Figures are rounded, so the column may be a penny out. Product cost is the biggest line, £20.73 once you add the write-off. Commission is £5.10. Postage, the per parcel fee, affiliate commission and returns handling add another £8.45 between them, which is more than the commission costs.
The per parcel fee is easy to miss. If you ship orders yourself rather than using Fulfilled by TikTok, TikTok charges a Shipped by Seller service fee of £0.50 including VAT per delivered package. It is charged on delivery, and the rate card does not say it comes back.
Fulfilled by TikTok is not automatically the cheap option either. It charges an operation fee per item that rises with size, starting at £0.78 for an extra small item, plus £1.99 per parcel on orders of £22 or more. Run both routes against your own parcel profile, because the answer changes with size, weight and items per box.
Then there is returns. ZigZag's annual returns report puts UK clothing returns at 23.6% of online orders. It does not publish a sportswear specific rate, so 24% is a planning assumption, not a benchmark you can quote back to a lender. Our post on modelling returns and sizing leakage goes through where the money goes once a parcel comes back.
Affiliate is the quiet one. You set the rate, and TikTok's own guidance puts the average across the platform at around 10% to 15%. Commission is calculated on the product price after seller discounts, which means the ex VAT price rather than the £68 the customer paid. If 35% of your orders come through creators at 12%, that is £2.38 of cost per kept order.
Do not model the affiliate layer as fully recoverable. Commission reverses if the refund is processed before the creator's commission settles. A return requested late in the window may not complete in time, and that commission stays paid.
Constraint Three: Settlement Is Measured From Delivery
This is the constraint that catches profitable brands.
TikTok runs five settlement periods, all measured from delivery rather than the order date. Beginner shops in probation are on the introductory period of 31 days. Standard and Premium shops, including shops still in probation at those tiers, are on the standard period of 8 days. Accelerated is 3 days and express is 1 day, earned on performance and volume. Deferred is 31 days for security or fraud checks.
So an order delivered on day one is paid around day 32 while you are on the introductory period. An order delivered on day 80 is paid around day 111 if you have stayed there, and around day 88 if you have graduated to standard. That difference, repeated across 3,000 orders, is the single biggest swing in the whole forecast.
The returns tail runs the other way and makes it worse. Customers can request a return within 30 days of delivery and have to get it back inside that window, with an extra seven days if the request lands in the final week. Transit and inspection can push the refund later, so returns from one month land in the next.
Do not release the returns reserve on day 30. Drop off can run to day 37, and inspection can push the refund later.
The Worked 90 Days
Here is the illustrative brand from the opening, worked through properly. Average order value £68 including VAT, free delivery, 24% returns, £19.50 landed cost per unit.
| The 90 day plan | Month 1 | Month 2 | Month 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Orders received | 450 | 950 | 1,600 |
| Orders returned at 24% | 108 | 228 | 384 |
| Orders you keep | 342 | 722 | 1,216 |
| Gross sales | £30,600 | £64,600 | £108,800 |
| Net revenue, ex VAT | £19,380 | £40,913 | £68,907 |
Now the full quarter, with every cost in the place an accountant would put it.
| The 90 days | £ | % of net revenue |
|---|---|---|
| Net revenue | 129,200 | 100.0% |
| Product cost, including write off | (47,268) | 36.6% |
| TikTok commission, net of VAT | (11,628) | 9.0% |
| Shipped by Seller fees, net of VAT | (1,250) | 1.0% |
| Postage | (9,900) | 7.7% |
| Affiliate commission | (5,426) | 4.2% |
| Returns processing | (2,700) | 2.1% |
| Contribution | 51,028 | 39.5% |
| Advertising | (18,333) | 14.2% |
| Overheads | (15,000) | 11.6% |
| Launch costs | (4,583) | 3.5% |
| Operating profit | 13,111 | 10.1% |
A 10% operating margin in a launch quarter is a good result. It is also where most founders stop. Do not.
The same quarter as cash. The brand buys 3,400 units at £19.50 plus VAT, so cash leaves at £23.40 a unit and the VAT comes back on the return. Stock is bought on deposit before shipment, so it is paid for before it sells. Advertising and overheads are paid monthly. This is the downside case: 31 day settlement all quarter, which is what happens if you never leave Beginner. TikTok releases funds at the end of that period and the bank adds roughly three business days, so the money lands later than the table shows.
| Cash, VAT included | Day 30 | Day 60 | Day 90 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paid out to date | (39,031) | (82,432) | (138,200) |
| Received from TikTok | 0 | 20,124 | 62,608 |
| Cash position | (39,031) | (62,308) | (75,592) |
Month two brought £20,124 from month one's orders and month three brought another £42,484. The £71,552 owed on month three had not landed at all.
Now change one assumption. If you graduate to Standard at the start of month two, settlement drops to 8 days. Most of month two and three then arrives inside the quarter, and the day 90 position improves to roughly minus £23,000 on the same trading. Same orders, same costs, about £52,000 less funding needed. That is why probation status belongs in the cash forecast, not just the sales one.
Why A Profitable Quarter Can Still Break You
The gap is not a mystery and it is not a loss. On day 90 the brand is £75,592 out of pocket and it is owed £71,552 by TikTok, with £19,032 of stock on the shelf and £1,881 of VAT to pay. The business is not failing. It is early.
A launch quarter is supposed to be cash negative if it is growing. The failure is not the negative number. It is discovering it in week ten instead of week one.
The hole keeps deepening while you grow. In the model it is £39,031 at day 30 and £75,592 at day 90. It does not flatten, because every month buys the next month's stock. Growth is what keeps the hole open. That is fine, as long as you have funded it deliberately.
The VAT is not yours. You collect £25,840 of output VAT in the quarter and reclaim most of it on stock, fees and advertising, which leaves about £1,881 payable. In a quarter where you buy less stock, the VAT bill rises sharply. Our post on VAT rules as you grow past the threshold covers the registration mechanics.
The returns reserve is real money, not an accounting entry. Refunds come out of your settlement balance rather than straight out of the bank, so a heavy returns week can wipe out a payout or push it negative. The stock comes back and sits there until someone inspects and re-lists it. Commission comes back. The forward postage usually does not. Plan for the cash to disappear on the refund date.
Four Ways Founders Break The Forecast
1. Forecasting revenue instead of orders. Revenue is average order value multiplied by orders, and both move. If your launch offer pulls average order value from £68 to £54, revenue falls about 20.6% while the fee stack stays roughly the same per order. Forecast orders and average order value separately, then multiply.
2. Treating 9% as the cost of selling on TikTok. On the worked example, commission is £5.10 of the £34.28 it costs to fulfil and sell a kept order. Postage, the per parcel fee, affiliate commission and returns handling add £8.45. Model per order costs per order and commission against its percentage base.
3. Putting every sale and its payout in the same month. Payout follows delivery plus whichever settlement period applies, which might be 31 days, 8 days, 3 days or 1. Model the tier you will actually have, week by week. A one month shift is close enough in month one and wrong by month three.
4. Funding the average month instead of the peak. The average of £39,031 and £75,592 is not the number you need. The peak is. Work out the worst week, add the next stock deposit and the VAT bill, and fund that. Our post on cash flow forecasting for fast growing brands shows how to lay the weeks out.
What To Fix Before Day One
Decide the VAT position before the stock lands. Compulsory registration applies when taxable turnover goes over £90,000 in the last 12 months, or is expected to in the next 30 days. This plan passes that inside the first quarter, so registering before launch is usually right. HMRC lets you recover VAT on goods bought up to four years before registration, but only if you still hold them and can produce a stock account. Goods completely used up before registration cannot be recovered.
Write the probation plan next to the sales plan. Which tasks get you to Standard and Premium, and who owns them. If the answer is nobody, month two is a hope.
Agree the stock plan and the cash plan together. The 3,400 units in this model are not a purchasing decision, they are a funding decision. Our post on the inventory plan for a sports brand scaling into Q4 sets out the order timing that keeps the two in step.
Set up settlement reconciliation before your first payout. You want a weekly view of what TikTok owes you, what has been deducted and what has been refunded. If the first time you read a statement is the first time it looks wrong, you have lost a month. Payout reconciliation at £1m is the process we run.
Choose Fulfilled by TikTok or Shipped by Seller on your own data. Count the items per order, measure the parcels and price both routes. Shipped by Seller charges per delivered package. FBT combines a per item operation fee with per parcel shipping, so a two item box behaves differently.
FAQs
How many orders can a new TikTok Shop UK seller take in a day?
Thirty a day at Beginner, 50 at Standard and 100 at Premium, with no cap once you reach Pro. There is no fixed timeline for graduation. Shops move up by completing tasks and meeting performance standards, so treat the cap as a hard ceiling while you are in probation.
When does TikTok Shop pay a new UK seller?
Beginner shops in probation are paid 31 days after delivery on the introductory period. Standard and Premium shops, including shops still in probation at those tiers, are on the 8 day standard period. Accelerated settlement is 3 days and express is 1 day for eligible shops outside probation, and deferred settlement is 31 days.
What return rate should a sports brand forecast on TikTok Shop?
Use 24% as a planning assumption. ZigZag's annual returns report puts UK clothing returns at 23.6% of online orders, but it does not publish a sportswear specific figure. TikTok lets customers request a return within 30 days of delivery, with an extra seven days to send it back if the request lands in the final week.
The Close
A 90 day forecast for a sports brand on TikTok Shop is not a sales target with costs underneath it. It is three schedules that have to agree: the orders the platform will allow, the stock and spend you can fund, and the date the cash actually lands.
Get those three lined up and the frightening bank balance in week ten becomes a planned number you have already funded. Get them wrong and you will spend the quarter profitable and short of cash, which is the most expensive way to be right.
If you are launching on TikTok Shop and want the forecast built before the stock lands, book a call.