Inaccurate Financial Rports

Hey everyone,

Last night Apple released their financial report for December, and I'm seeing a large discrepancy when comparing to Sales and Trends. I realise that the Apple Fiscal Month is different to the calendar month, so i've taken that into account. I've set Sales and Trends to be Dec 3 - Dec 30 2017 (as per fiscal).


Sales and Trends is reporting 376 Paid Units Sold equating to proceeds (yes, proceeds not sales) in excess of $500

Financial Report is showing only 175 Units Sold for a total of $350


What gives? I know that I've sold more than 175 Units in december as my apps have been ranked highly in multiple countries. Has anybody else had this sort of experience? I've sent an incident to Apple, but haven't heard back yet.


I'm a little concerned about this, as it's quite a bit of money. Especially, going forward where this month the revenue will be in the 10's of thousands. so I discrepancy of 35% is a big deal.


I'd love to hear from anyone else that has had this happen to them.

Accepted Reply

True to my word, I'm back to update this post. So the Financial Reports for January 2018 are out, and they look like they include all the sales that were missing in my opinion. Moral of the story is that if there seem to be missing amounts in the financial report, chances are they will be included next time.

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It may be the opposite of what you think. According to Apple, the Financial reports are the more accurate of the two report types. The Sales and Trends reports are only something like early estimates.

I get that they may be early estimates, but how can you "over estimate" the number of units sold by 35%? A unit is either sold or it's not. And then when the financial report comes out it's like "well, actually, you didn't sell that unit". I'd understand if the estimate was lower, and that their early scan of units purchased missed a few based on differing timezones, when the job was run etc.


I find it funny that that is Apple's "answer", ie. "Oh you know, we have 2 reports, one is more accurate than the other". If I wrote a system where 2 reports varied by 35% I'd get a whooping, or at the very least made to fix it the error so that they match up.


Reading the other posts, it suggests that there may be discrepancies based on time zones and not all purchases around boundaries may be calculated at the correct date (eg. just like when you buy something from itunes, and then you get the receipt anywhere from 1 day to 1 week later). In any case, I really wanted to hear from someone that had issues a while ago to see if the missing revenue appeared in subsequent months, but unfortunately no one seems to have updated any of their posts.


I guess I'll have to wait till the Jan 2018 report comes out in early February and see what's up. I'll be sure to update this post though.

Someone wrote: "A unit is either sold or it's not."


Unfortunately "Sold" is likely not an atomic action, but multiple interactions between the App store systems, the customers device, and the payment processor. One hypothesis is that the Sales reports might depend on one of the earlier interactions, and the Financial reports depend on one of the later interactions, the money being verified as deposited in Apple's bank account several days or weeks later. As many merchants know, lots of bad things can happen in between.

I agree with you, but it would be great if Apple were transparent about this.

>would be great if


Bowling uphill here...


Feel free to file bugs against the process to make your needs heard - use the bug link, below right, adding your report #(s) to your thread for referrence.


Good luck.

True to my word, I'm back to update this post. So the Financial Reports for January 2018 are out, and they look like they include all the sales that were missing in my opinion. Moral of the story is that if there seem to be missing amounts in the financial report, chances are they will be included next time.