Discrepancy between sales and financial reports?

Question

Discrepancy between sales and financial reports?

Has anyone seen a discrepancy between sales and financial reports?
The financial reports are always lower than the sales.

I've heard things that sometimes sales take a day or two to be processed so perhaps some of the last few days of sales don't make it but I'm talking about discrepancies in units sold that account for more than the final week of the month, plus the previous month's discrepancies.... so that argument doesn't jive.

Has anyone else seen this? Have they got any response from Apple on this? (I've sent a message as well)

Apple, Mac OS X (10.5.1), A Macbook Pro and iMac

Posted on Oct 8, 2008 11:36 AM

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Answer 1

Oct 8, 2008 11:56 AM in response to PunkStar Studios

Don't forget this months sales report is for 8/31 to 9/27 and not to 9/30. So you might have calculated 3 extra days in your daily sales reporting vs the monthly fiscal report.

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Answer 2

Oct 8, 2008 11:59 AM in response to melloware

That still doesn't jive though (I was aware that their closing for he month is always on a Saturday). We're talking over 8 weeks of missing sales, not 3 days.
To further illustrate the problem, one app I stopped charging for back on Aug 19.

It's royalties as of today still have not been paid for in full. They only accounted for 85% of the quantities sold in the financial report.

AUGUST 19!

Programmers like it when 2+2 gives a result of 4. When the result is 3, well... there's a bug somewhere.

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Answer 3

orangekay

Level 5

4,085 points

Oct 8, 2008 12:00 PM in response to PunkStar Studios

PunkStar Studios wrote:
Programmers like it when 2+2 gives a result of 4.

You know some?

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Answer 4

Oct 8, 2008 12:01 PM in response to PunkStar Studios

Sounds like you need to contact Apple by phone...something ain't right.

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Answer 5

Oct 8, 2008 12:07 PM in response to melloware

Sure...
If only there was a phone number to call.
😉
I'm trying the email method for now.
They got back to me with a quasi form answer (explaining the Sat thing and so forth) and that over time it all evens out.
I replied back with the example I gave above with the App that stopped selling in August... I'm waiting for a reply.

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Answer 6

Oct 8, 2008 11:04 PM in response to PunkStar Studios

I feel there are discrepancies in the reports too. I just got my first set of reports and found apparent underreporting. I've written in to the reporting address about my concerns and awaiting a reply.

doug

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Answer 7

Oct 10, 2008 6:26 AM in response to Doug Lerner2

My weekly reports jived with the daily reports but my monthly financial reports (the ones we get paid on) were short by 10% of what the weekly and Daily reports gave.

I wrote iTunesAppReporting@apple.com and got nothing back. Seems to happen more often that not. iTSPayments@apple.com right back most of the time but I have never gotten a reply (other than the auto generated reply with the case number) back from devprograms@apple.com.

Does anyone have a phone number for the Dev people?

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Answer 8

Oct 10, 2008 6:39 AM in response to kingsoul8

I wrote devprograms to ask what I should do since iTunesAppReporting doesn't even acknowledge email with an auto-response, so I have no confirmation that they received my email.

But all devprograms did was write back saying I should email iTunesAppReporting. Very circular.

doug

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Answer 9

Oct 10, 2008 7:09 AM in response to PunkStar Studios

The response I've heard in the past is that the trend reports show downloads, while the financial reports show closed transactions. As you've no doubt noticed, iTunes doesn't immediately charge your card when you buy something; the transactions are delayed and batched if possible, often by as much as several days. I don't know if this can explain all of the discrepancy in your specific case, of course.

The other thing is that--especially if you've released updates--you need to be sure you're not counting re-downloads as sales. Make sure you're only counting trend report records where column I is 1. (If there's a bug in this system, I bet it's here--I wouldn't be surprised if some re-downloads are accidentally being counted as purchases.)

One last point: returns cost more than purchases earn, so naive earnings calculations based on the trend reports will estimate high.

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