Square TikTok Shop Integration: TikTok Sells, Square Knows

Square tells us about a counter sale as it’s rung. TikTok Shop tells us about an order as it’s placed. Each one lowers the count the other side works from in under a second. So at 11:05 the till rings the first one and TikTok can now sell eleven; at 11:06 TikTok sells two and the register shows nine. By the time the twelfth goes, whichever side sold it, the other side stops. The fourteen people who wanted one after that get an out-of-stock, not a refund three days later.

Square keeps its catalogue for the register and TikTok Shop keeps its own, and neither reads the other’s. We sit between them and correct each side from the other rather than making either the master. Items pair on SKU, which is the thing to get right first, and TikTok Shop hands orders out but can’t take one in, so if a TikTok order is going to be packed from the counter’s stock, Square is the side that can be told to fill it.

Square holds a SKU up to 80 characters and TikTok Shop takes 50, so 50 is the length to design to. A longer SKU is cut to fit on the way to TikTok Shop and stops matching the item it came from. We cut rather than refuse to send, so nothing errors and nothing turns red; the item drops out of sync and you find out when its count has drifted. Shorten the long ones first, and give both shops the same SKU.

TikTok also wants six things before it lists anything: a category, that category’s attributes, at least one image of 300×300 or bigger, a package weight, package dimensions, and a title of 25 characters or more. We ask TikTok which category it recommends and take its answer, pad short titles, and send weight and dimensions from Square when they’re there. A new TikTok seller can publish 100 products a day; a bigger first export waits for tomorrow, or you switch on the drain and a job sends up to the cap again every six hours until it’s through.

Square has no field for a tracking number, so we can’t write one back to a Square sale. If a customer orders at the counter for posting later, the tracking lives in QuickSync rather than on the Square record. Counter sales that walk out of the shop never need one. TikTok orders get their tracking the usual way, against a carrier on your TikTok shipping template.