Praevo Partners' TikTok Shop payouts reached Xero with the fees missing and the discounts recorded wrong, until the firm switched to Link My Books in June and the manual journals stopped.

Why Praevo Partners switched from A2X to fix its TikTok Shop data

The problem with TikTok Shop in A2X was never one missing number. A2X has no TikTok Shop integration, so orders reach the books the long way round: imported into Shopify, then passed on from there. That data arrives broken twice. The TikTok fees are missing entirely, and TikTok-funded discounts are recorded as if the seller gave them, so real revenue is understated too.

Someone has to untangle that on every payout, assuming they spot it at all. Across a client book selling hundreds of thousands a month, it becomes the job.

Praevo Partners is a UK fractional finance firm working with around 30 ecommerce SMEs. The client base runs from subscription businesses selling supplements and healthcare products to retail brands in clothing, jewellery and accessories, and the firm provides everything from CFO services through to bookkeeping and ad management. Every client is an ecommerce business. Praevo itself is about a year old.

Ryan Choi, Fractional Head of Finance at Praevo Partners, came into the fractional finance side at the start of the year and is clear that the underlying problems have not changed much even as selling models have. More clients are moving to subscription, but the questions are the same ones.

"It's cash flow forecasting, it's understanding the numbers, it's making sure that everything's accurate and what they base decisions on is reliable enough that they can actually act upon."

Praevo has used automated reconciliation tools since it started, so this was never a move away from spreadsheets. Until June the firm ran on A2X. Here is what changed.

Where A2X broke the TikTok Shop numbers

A2X handled payouts and cost of goods, and on features Choi rates it close. TikTok Shop was the exception. With no direct connection, the workaround was the Shopify import, and what came through was the full order value with the fee detail stripped out and the discounts muddled.

"The limitation of A2X is the detail of information that is passed through from the storefront, so like Shopify or TikTok, to Xero or QuickBooks. That limitation in detail just meant that for myself and for other bookkeepers, it gave us more additional work to try to reconcile some of the payouts."

Choi's simplified version of the problem:

"So £100 order, £20 fees deducted. We see the £80, but we see £100 coming from A2X. That's a £20 gap, which you have to try to plug."

He says so himself. "Now, that's a simple example. When you're dealing with like 20K, 100K, or 500K+ numbers, it becomes a bit of a bore."

The fuller version, once a TikTok-funded promotion and an affiliate are involved, is worse than a gap: the recorded revenue itself is wrong, because TikTok tops up the discounts it funds, and none of that reaches the books through the Shopify route.

His example and the one below are different orders, and the second is closer to what a multi-channel client actually looks like. Take one £100 item, where the seller runs a 10% coupon, TikTok runs a promotion of its own, an affiliate is involved, and TikTok charges fulfilment and commission:

Figures are illustrative and VAT-inclusive. On this one order the Shopify route understates revenue by £5 and hides £35 of fees. More importantly, it gets the VAT wrong on both sides.

Why a reconciliation gap is an advisory problem

For a firm selling CFO services rather than bookkeeping alone, this is not filed under admin. Missing fee detail means the margin picture handed to the client is incomplete, and the advice built on it is too.

"Without that understanding, you could be giving a client wrong advice as well. If you didn't realise that TikTok's actually charging you, I don't know, 10% on this fee and then 15% on other fees, without that full picture you can't really advise your client in the best way possible."

That is the argument Choi makes to other firms, and it is a different argument from time saved. A plugged gap balances the books. It does not tell the client which channel is actually making them money.

Why Praevo Partners switched

The conversation started higher up the firm, with one of Praevo's senior team talking to Daniel Little at Link My Books about what the product could cover, and about how the working relationship would run, including support for the recommendations Praevo makes to its own clients.

The decision itself came down to arithmetic. The fee detail that A2X had been leaving out came through. The cost was lower. Choi's summary:

"The advantage of Link My Books had offset the disadvantages in A2X, like for example the missing fees. Link My Books completely undid all of that, so we don't have to do that stuff anymore. It was also cheaper as well, so it was cheaper and we were getting a better service. And we were getting more information. It was kind of like a no-brainer."

Asked what nearly stopped them, he could not name anything beyond the usual reluctance to take on a migration.

What the migration involved

Praevo Partners moved at the start of June. Not every client went across, and that was deliberate: some are pre-revenue with nothing to reconcile yet, others are advisory only, with no bookkeeping element. The clients that were ready were migrated.

Choi describes the process as smooth, with a caveat worth passing on. He had direct support from Daniel throughout, which he is the first to point out is not the normal experience.

"It helped a lot that Daniel was holding our hands throughout the whole way. Even with some initial support, I think doing it myself now is actually pretty simple, the process. It really highlights each stage of what exactly we have to do."

The two points where he wanted more clarity were both at sign-up: which party takes on the billing, and how the storefront count works. A message to the service desk cleared both, and he is quick to keep them in proportion. "I'm just nitpicking, to be honest."

His wider point is fair and worth hearing. Someone setting this up without a founder on hand would want the answers written down. "Without Daniel explaining everything to me, I probably would have been a bit daunted about what to do here. It's pretty self-explanatory, but also when you're starting something new, it can kind of not be."

What has changed since

The honest answer, one month in, is that the client-facing work looks the same and the bookkeeping work does not. Beyond the initial push to get clients to connect their channels, nothing changed on the client side at all.

"For our bookkeeper side, it's become a lot easier because now the payouts match exactly what Link My Books exports out. So there's no creating manual journals in Xero anymore. It's literally just an auto-reconciliation tool that we just turn on and everything just reconciles automatically."

On the industry figure of five hours saved per client per month, Choi was careful not to overstate a number he has not yet measured across a full cycle, but his estimate ran higher. "Just purely on the whole, I don't have to bother going to TikTok Shop and then manually working out all the fees they're charging us and trying to reconcile it all. I would say it's a good 5–10 hours."

He does not expect it to change what the firm takes on or how it prices, at least not yet. What it has changed is what the team no longer checks.

"I guess stop worrying about the reliability of the data, because we know that for it to match the bank payments means that it's been processed correctly. That's a massive win for us."

What he would tell a firm still on A2X

Choi is specific about when the switch matters, and he does not claim it matters for everyone.

"If the client was growing beyond Shopify, then you definitely need Link My Books, because of the whole reconciliation side of having those additional numbers going in, being able to see the full entire picture of every single fee from all these different platforms."

Asked whether there are clients he would not use it for, his answer was short: no, other than situations he cannot control. Asked how he describes the product to another accountant, he gives the shortest version of all: "An automated bank payout reconciliation tool for online ecommerce storefronts that captures all the relevant fees and data needed for you to have a clean set of books."

Where to start

If a client sells on one platform and the payout matches the sales report, this is not an urgent problem. The moment a second or third channel appears, and TikTok Shop is usually the one that breaks the pattern, with platform-funded promotions and fees the import never carries, the gap between the books and the bank stops being a rounding difference.

Link My Books breaks every settlement into sales, refunds, fees and taxes and posts a clean summary to Xero or QuickBooks that reconciles against the bank deposit. Fourteen days, no card required, and a setup call with one of the in-house accountants.

Which of your clients has a channel you are still plugging by hand?

Frequently asked questions

Why doesn't my TikTok Shop payout match the sales figure?

Two reasons. TikTok Shop deducts commission, fulfilment and any affiliate fees before paying out, and TikTok-funded promotions mean the customer's payment is not the seller's revenue either. If orders arrive in the books at full order value, both the revenue and the fees are wrong until someone corrects them by hand.

Why is TikTok Shop data imported through Shopify inaccurate?

The imported order shows the list price with all discounts lumped together as if the seller funded them. TikTok-funded promotions are actually revenue owed to the seller, and TikTok's fees are not in the Shopify data at all, so the books understate revenue and miss the fees entirely.

How do you reconcile TikTok Shop in Xero?

Praevo Partners uses Link My Books, which breaks each settlement into sales, refunds, fees and taxes and posts a summary that matches the bank deposit. Ryan Choi describes it as an auto-reconciliation tool the team turns on, removing the manual journals they previously created in Xero.

How long does it take to migrate from A2X?

Praevo Partners moved at the start of June, migrating the clients that were ready and leaving pre-revenue and advisory-only clients until later. Choi described the process as smooth and the steps as clear, and said he would be comfortable running the setup himself now.

Does missing fee data affect more than the bookkeeping?

Yes. Choi's point is that incomplete fee detail leaves the margin picture wrong, so advice built on it is wrong too. A firm that cannot see what each channel charges cannot tell a client which channel is actually profitable.

Does an accountant still need to check the numbers?

Yes. Choi's team reviews the accounts rather than rebuilding the data, and his confidence comes from the entries matching the bank payment. As he puts it, if it matches the bank payments, it has been processed correctly.