A retainer alone will not tell you the total cost

When two agencies send a quote, the retainer is the first figure anyone reads. But once revenue starts the platform deducts its fee first, and the seller terms state that it may revise those rates at its sole discretion from time to time. Whether the lower retainer is also the lower total only becomes clear with the other items beside it.

So when reviewing a quote it is better to check who pays each item and who decides it before looking at the figures.

Who pays means whose account the money actually leaves from; who decides means who sets the amount. An item where neither is settled cannot be compared even when a figure is printed next to it.

This is also why a typical monthly figure is so hard to find. One analysis tracking roughly one hundred thousand US sellers puts the top one percent, fewer than nine hundred sellers, at sixty percent of tracked GMV, and the top tenth of a percent above twenty-five percent. In the same analysis the bottom half accounts for about one tenth of one percent.

That analysis states its method openly: cumulative GMV is estimated from units sold multiplied by average price. In a market this concentrated, a budget built on the average fits neither the brands above it nor the ones below.

So no going rate for a retainer appears here. What appears instead is what to check on each item once a quote arrives.

The table below sets out the cost items in an operating quote with who pays, who decides and where to verify each one. When a quote arrives, fill in where each item belongs.

The item most often missing from a quote is the sales tax on the fee. Sellers whose registered business address is in West Virginia or Texas have sales tax added on top of the referral fee as of 1 November 2025.

It helps to name someone responsible for watching the fee schedule as well. A brand selling across several categories is charged a different rate per product, and if nobody checks whether a rate was revised, the margin calculation is the only thing left wrong.

When filling the table in, complete the who decides column before any figure. Items the platform sets are not open to negotiation, while items the brand sets can be decided today.

Affiliate commission is the one platform cost the brand sets for itself. It runs between one and eighty percent of order GMV, either chosen by the seller or optimised automatically, and a targeted collaboration rate takes precedence over the open collaboration rate. The calculation is revenue minus refunds multiplied by the rate, and creators are typically paid fifteen days after delivery completes.

Creator posting fees and sample costs overlap with a seeding budget. Looking for those two inside an operating retainer will not turn them up in any quote.

The last item, ad account and data ownership, carries no figure at all. It belongs in the table anyway because it decides what the brand takes away when the contract ends.

An agency is invited into Business Center as a partner and assigned permissions over assets such as ad accounts, the shop, pixels and catalogues. Only a Business Center admin can assign them. Which side holds the admin role therefore decides the final day in advance.

The assets to check are not a single ad account. Pixels, catalogues and the shop are each assigned separately, so anything missed only surfaces if you check them one by one at the end. Pixels are usually found last.

If the agency was invited into a Business Center the brand owns, ending the contract is a matter of revoking permissions. If the accounts were created under the agency Business Center instead, ending it becomes a handover negotiation.

Published tempo guidance states that accounts and data belong to the brand. That sentence does not replace a contract, but which principle an agency works from is worth confirming in the first meeting.

One question is enough to check it. If a quote cannot immediately answer which account these assets sit under once the contract ends, that item has not been designed yet.

Data raises the same question as accounts. When the ad reports, the creator list and the raw results are stored only inside agency tooling, what the brand keeps at the end is a summary.

The handover procedure is safest written into the contract. From which account to which, within how many days, and who executes it: three things are enough.

Logistics is the cost most often collapsed into a single item in a quote.

There are four shipping arrangements: sellers shipping on their own, the platform standard shipping service, doorstep collection by the platform where it is offered, and holding inventory in a platform warehouse.

Brands shipping from a Korean warehouse cannot use the second one, because the standard shipping service runs on the assumption of a US domestic warehouse.

Once inventory sits inside the United States, the next thing to check is who owns the warehouse. A platform warehouse and a third-party logistics warehouse differ in rate structure and in the address returns come back to.

Every entry on a rate card carries its own effective date. So the phrase current rate needs a date beside it, and a quote without one gets recalculated next month.

Using a platform warehouse splits logistics into three items. Per-unit handling, storage and return processing each carry their own rate card and effective date. No amounts appear here because they vary with weight, volume and effective date, so any copied figure would be wrong.

If a quote shows logistics as one item, ask for it as three. Take each amount from the rate card in force on the day you sign, with the effective date beside it.

The conditions under which on-time dispatch exempts you from late delivery penalties also differ by arrangement. Whoever takes logistics takes that metric with it.

Returns need an owner as well. Without a return address, an inspection standard and a restocking rule, the month returns rise is the month that cost belongs nowhere.

Where the agency runs logistics, check whose name is on the warehouse contract. Inventory can belong to the brand while the right to move it does not.

To compare two quotes, fill each of them into the table above and count the cells left empty.

The one with more empty cells is not yet comparable, however low its figure. A few things are worth watching while filling it in.

Next, check which screen the reporting is based on. The attribution window for TikTok Shop ads is seven days on click and one day on view, last interaction wins, and a click outranks a view. Because the key is the shop rather than the product, a purchase of product Y after an ad for product X still counts to that campaign.

The same rule explains why Seller Center and Ads Manager show different revenue. One counts revenue on the day the order happened, the other counts revenue that occurred inside the attribution window. Receive a report without knowing that, and a month goes into suspecting the agency.

When the answer on an item comes back short and specific, that item has already been designed.

A sentence such as media spend is separate and runs from the brand ad account carries both who pays and who executes, and that is the whole check. If two quotes total up close to each other, count how many items the brand still decides for itself and the difference shows.

Once the table is complete, what remains is getting the answers into the contract. A quote that cannot answer the items below is not yet in a comparable state.

Account ownership is deliberately not on that list. The checks in the previous section already cover it, and asking the same question twice leaves neither one clear.

The commission grace period is on the list for a reason. Raising the rate applies immediately, while lowering it keeps the previous rate for thirty days for creators already promoting that product. Book the saving into this month and a month of it will be wrong.

Write the contract term and the notice period down beside it. If transferring the assets takes longer than the notice period, the handover does not finish inside the final month.

What published tempo guidance covers is a dedicated manager on standing duty and a monthly performance report built on clicks, orders and saves. No fee percentage, per-unit logistics rate or going retainer appears here for the same reason, and anything beyond that varies with the project.