Apple Appstore Summary Sales Report API updates historical reports without notification

Question

Created Jun ’24

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I've had several internal users note that the Summary Sales report API has started to have updates to historical reports.

As an example - a subscription quantity might be 1 when the API is queried for 1/15/24, but then if the API is queried and reconciled against itself it might be quantity of 3 when pulled 3/15/24.

This only started after 1/1/24, so I am wondering if there was a change to the report logic, or a new policy that Apple has started to allow that is making backdated changes to the summary sales report. This is causing a lot of potential missed revenue and manual effort for our accounting teams.

Is there any guidance that Apple team or others can provide on this topic?

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Answer 1

endecotp OP

Jun ’24

This is causing a lot of ... manual effort for our accounting teams.

Ideally the accountants should use only the Financial Reports, which are definitive (in some sense).

Is there some reason why your accounts - rather than your "sales tracking", or whatever you want to call it - need the extra detail of the other reports?

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Answer 2

ChuckMN OP

Jun ’24

Hey @caleach,

Great question here!

I am a very large user of the "Download Sales and Trends Reports" API as documented below and I make many requests every day.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appstoreconnectapi/download_sales_and_trends_reports

While I have not experienced what you have experienced (I am also not looking at the data for the same reasons), I have experienced times where the data coming from Apple has "disappeared" and the API has stopped making the data available even though it was previously available and the API returns different flavors of a 403 response with no data.

When this has happened, I have taken all of my requests and logs, opened up a Feedback with Apple, and then eventually the team was able to resolve the reporting issue and data flowed freely for the dates that had "disappeared".

Sales Reports and Finance Reports can be tricky as well with all of the variables that go into what makes a unique purchase while also respecting the privacy of users. If you have questions about your sales, I would recommend contacting Apple Developer Support and requesting a consultation on the finance reports to help understand why you are seeing the differences.

It could be that Apple themselves caught a reporting miss and corrected it which is great if thats what happened.

Not an answer, but hopefully this helps and happy coding!

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