TikTok is getting a lot of hype in the ecommerce space these days and with good reason. A recent survey found that over 70% of global TikTok shoppers immediately started shopping after stumbling across items in feeds or live stories. 

People may come to TikTok for the funny dance videos, but they stay to shop—and shop. From 15-year-olds making millions selling hair scrunchies to handmade leather belts going viral, TikTok is transforming the way people buy online. 

If you’re ready to start selling on TikTok, then you’ll need to have a solid strategy for TikTok shop inventory management. Otherwise, you’ll run the risk of disappointing your new customers—and potentially running foul of TikTok’s stringent seller performance evaluation policy. 

Here’s our guide to: 

• Why you should be on TikTok Shop
• The basics of effective ecommerce inventory management
• How to manage your inventory on TikTok 

Why you should sell on TikTok Shop

First of all—is this even a problem you need to solve? Is it worth being on TikTok Shop? 

According to Stu Conroy, the Director of Innovation and Ecommerce at Highlands, the answer is a definitive yes. In a recent episode of Selling Strategies, Stu explained that TikTok is THE place to be for ecommerce brands large and small, because: 

Social selling is the future of ecommerce

“Over the last few years, social media companies have said, ‘We influence a lot of sales,’” says Stu. And, of all the social media platforms, “TikTok has led the way in making it easy to translate that influence into transactional behavior.” 

They’ve nailed what Stu calls “frictionless commerce—putting your products in front of an audience and making it easy for them to purchase straight away.” Small wonder that it’s the top social media platform for impulse buys. 

 It’s a good way to reach a younger audience

If your target market skews younger, you’ll want to be on TikTok because younger generations are using it to research products, explains Stu. 50% of Gen-Z are using TikTok as a search engine  and it’s their second favorite social media platform for online shopping (Instagram is still in the top spot for now.) 

You can influence a highly engaged audience

People aren’t necessarily on TikTok to shop, of course. But even if your audience goes over to Amazon to make the actual purchase, observes Stu, the “halo effect” of TikTok influencer marketing can help build trust in your products, especially for higher-ticket items.  

All that said, it only makes sense to add TikTok Shop (or any new sales channel) if you’re able to handle the new demand effectively. And that will take a solid inventory management strategy. 

What is inventory management and why do you need to get it right? 

A quick definition to kick things off: 

Inventory management is the process of keeping track of your products and making sure you have enough stock to meet customer demand, without having too much or too little. 

Effective inventory management means that you order the right amount of stock, store it efficiently, know where it is at all times and track how much you’re selling on all your different sales channels. 

Managing your inventory correctly across all your sales channels means that you’ll: 

• Save money—because you won’t be wasting your budget on products nobody wants, letting stock get out of date, or buying components you don’t need 
• Keep your customers happy—because you’ll always have the products they want, when they want them 
• Save time—because you can automate your inventory management, meaning you’ll spend less time on data entry and chasing down manual errors 
• Improve your forecasting—so you can stay ahead of your customer preferences 
• Make more money—because happy customers are repeat customers

How to manage inventory on TikTok Shop 

For TikTok shop inventory management, you’ll need to set up your Stock Dashboard, which lets you view the inventory levels of all your products in real time.  

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TikTok groups products into five Stock Status categories: 

1. On hand （All stock that is physically available）
2. Available (All stock that is not reserved for an order, campaign, or creator)
3. Locked for Campaign (The quantity reserved for a specific campaign)
4. Locked for Creator (The quantity reserved for a specific creator)
5. Locked for Committed (Ordered by customers but hasn’t left the warehouse yet)

You can use the Filters to find products by stock status, product category, quantity, or warehouse.

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You can also see how the quantity of each product has changed in the last month by clicking on the History button on the far right-hand side of the stock dashboard. 

Finally, you can pull out a list of products to reorder, to make things easier. Just click Restock List/Download to generate a list of products needing to be replenished, including those that are Out of Stock, Low Stock, or have reached Stock Alert Value.

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How to set up stock alerts on TikTok Shop 

TikTok Shop lets you set up automated alerts, so you’ll always re-order stock in plenty of time and don’t run the risk of stockouts. 

To set up a stock alert: 

1. Go to a product listing and click on Alert Value. Set the Alert Value—when your stock gets to that number of units, you’ll get an alert. 

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2. When the number of units falls to the designated Alert Value, you’ll get a notification in your Seller Center Homepage under Tasks. You’ll also get a notification in your Shop Updates. 
3. You can also batch-edit all your stock alert values at the same time. In the TikTok Seller Center, go to the Products section. Under Manage Stock, you’ll see an option to Batch edit stock alert value. 

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Best practice tips for TikTok shop inventory management

So far, so straightforward. But we’re guessing you aren’t only planning to sell via TikTok. If you’re like most ecommerce businesses, you’ll need to manage your inventory across multiple sales channels, including your own online store, a marketplace like Amazon, or other social media platforms. And multichannel inventory management isn’t easy. 

So here are a few tips for managing your inventory across TikTok and all your other channels: 

Get all your inventory information into a single dashboard

As we’ve shown here, it’s simple to manage your TikTok Shop stock via the TikTok dashboard. But we wouldn’t recommend it. If you’re managing TikTok stock in TikTok and Amazon stock in Amazon and then also tracking inventory in your own store, you’re almost guaranteed to drop the ball. It’s just too much information to keep track of manually. 

Instead, use a multichannel inventory management platform to bring all your inventory information into the same integrated dashboard. You’ll get a clear view on exactly what you’ve got, where it is and when you need to order more stock. 

Choose a tool that supports real-time, cross-channel synchronization. That way, you’ll minimize the risk of overselling and be more efficient—you can reorder stock for all your channels at once, for example, which will save you a ton of time and back-and-forthing with your suppliers. 

Maintain safety stock 

As TikTok’s many runaway ecommerce success stories show, things can move fast on there—and you don’t want to disappoint your new customers. The best way to avoid stockouts because of an unexpected demand surge, a supply chain disruption, or just a logistical mix-up is to keep a buffer of “safety stock”.  Safety stock is just extra inventory in case of sudden demand. 

Of course, you don’t want to keep too much stock in reserve either. Storing inventory costs money. To find out exactly how to calculate safety stock, see our guide to the safety stock formula. 

Automate as much as possible

Getting the most out of TikTok shop means spending time developing content, engaging with TikTok creators via the Affiliate program and looking for opportunities among TikTok shop’s extensive selection of campaigns, flash sales, coupons and other promotions. 

You don’t want to be wasting time manually tracking, managing and reordering your inventory when you could be selling. So you should look to automate as much of your Tiktok shop inventory management process as possible. 

With Linnworks, for instance, you can automatically update your TikTok shop when stock levels change, download all your orders into Linnworks so you can handle all your orders in the same channel, automatically update your prices and automate the purchase order process. 

Manage your TikTok shop inventory with Linnworks 

If you’re ready to start selling via TikTok shop, Linnworks makes it easy. As well as a ton of automated features to save you hours of manual data entry, Linnworks’ TikTok integration lets you: 

• Create new product listings from the same central platform, so your products look the same on all your sales channels 
• Centralize and unify your inventory, orders, shipping and payments, so you never lose track 
• Get real-time updates on all your inventory across all your sales channels and across all your warehouses and bins 
• Never worry about overselling or underselling again, so you can spend more time focusing on your business 

Ready to get started? Request a demo today!