Bookkeeping on Thousands of Transactions

Bookkeeping on transaction heavy sales - integration with Apple App Store Connect

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Hi all

I work for an App developer. We sell hundreds of App's per month at the moment. Forecasting to be selling thousands per month shortly. We use Xero.

How do other company's manage the bookkeeping for this level of sales transactions?

Currently, I download a CSV file from the App Store containing sales in the month. I spend a couple of hours each month calculating Gross Sales / Transaction Fees, etc, before uploading the results via a CSV into Xero (both Sales and Cost of Sales). And then a further hour reconciling payments from Apple against these Sales and CoS transactions.

Is this normal, in this day-and-age?

Does anyone know of any Apple App Store Connect Integration software which we can buy? Ideally one - or in addition to a second, third-party app - which will also reconcile bank receipts with sales transactions.

Or, how should we be managing the bookkeeping. I thought Making Tax Digital required us to enter transactions on an individual basis (which we can do). Is there a legal quick solution to this? We must be one of a thousand companies with this same problem.

Thank you so much in advance for any advice you may be able to provide.

Cheers, Chris

Replies (10)

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By ireallyshouldknowthisbut
21st Jul 2020 17:16

I would think of your payment processor as a "till".

So add up the monthly /weekly sales income as it arrives in the business bank account.

Book that in one transaction to Xero per bank transfer, after adjustments for VAT/fees etc which might need some quite sophisticated work, or might be easy depending who your customers are. [I have one booked as UK/EU/WW for example to get the VAT right]

job done.

MTD does not enforce till level transactional detail to be recorded, and you have it in any case via your payment processor.

Thanks (1)
Replying to ireallyshouldknowthisbut:
CG
By PartTime-FD
21st Jul 2020 17:39

Thank you for the reply. I appreciate it.

This just doesn't feel like a particularly professional job. And I do sincerely appreciate the reply!

A few problems with this method are:

We wouldn't know what the money related to, or whether we received the correct amount.

We wouldn't know which Month or F/Y the individual sales related to.

And thinking about it, we also need to report International Sales to foreign territories to report on tax obligations.

Is your suggestion the norm though ?

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Replying to PartTime-FD:
By ireallyshouldknowthisbut
22nd Jul 2020 08:59

Well you still need to do a proper job on analysing your income across territories and for VAT purposes and all the other issues, but normally you can get that all from your sales modules you don't have to replicate all that data again in your accounting software. It depends what you are doing any why.

In terms of "what is normal?" I have no idea. I can only tell you what we do with high volume clients.

Generally for something like app sales its all controlled elsewhere. ie if the customer stops paying, the app stops work automatically. There is no human involvement, and all the retailer sees is the license has stopped for that customer and its up to them how they follow that up. The accounting side is just "adding up"

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Noel Fraser
By noelfraser
22nd Jul 2020 11:01

Hi

I believe my company has a good solution for you. I have sent you a private message with more details.

Regards

Thanks (1)
Replying to noelfraser:
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By Lucy N
22nd Jul 2020 15:14

Interested to know what this is please? I have an Amazon seller who this might be useful for

Thanks (1)
Replying to Lucy N:
John Toon
By John Toon
22nd Jul 2020 15:21

For Amazon sellers A2X or Linkmybooks will do the trick

Thanks (1)
Replying to Lucy N:
By ireallyshouldknowthisbut
22nd Jul 2020 15:31

@lucy he is a sales manager for some software, cant remember the name, but he pops up on here flogging it. its not well known.

If you have an amazon/ebay client same applies. Its usually bonkers to start booking in individual customers unless you are masochistic. All the data you need is in Amazon's reports.

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John Toon
By John Toon
22nd Jul 2020 15:24

The simple answer it that people in your situation either do it manually or they employ a programmer and build a link between the two APIs, thus automating everything. This is how we manage issues like this unless there is an off the shelf solution.

The problem you can end up with in Xero is overloading the API or the soft transaction limits resulting in delays to the data feeding through or problems running reports.

Also worth noting that the Xero API is changing reasonably soon and so any developer should be planning for that now rather than leaving you in the lurch when the change comes.

Thanks (1)
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By paul.k2
31st Aug 2020 14:48

I have had some experience of taking high volume transactions from 3rd party systems and uploading them into different systems.

I assume the actual volume isn't causing you a problem?

I have a client who is grappling with reconciling a web cart, stripe, her bank and Xero. I came across this the other day. I haven't had a detailed look, but it might help.

https://apps.xero.com/uk/function/invoicing-jobs/app/reconciler

I am afraid I can't help with a direct connection to the apple store. Have you contacted Zapier or OneSAAS to see if they can help with this?

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By Dots
09th Apr 2021 07:35

Hi, sorry for dragging up an old thread, but isn’t this unnecessary? I know it used to be a little more complex with VAT, but my understanding is that’s now been simplified too with the terms of relationship between Apple and Developers.

At the end of each of Apple’s calendar months, Apple issue a financial report that, for each app or in-app purchase, and each country where units where sold, includes a line item with unit description, customer unit price, wholesale unit price, no of units, total price wholesale, total price wholesale in GBP after conversion.

The developer then raises an invoice to match and that’s the end of it.

As the relationship between Apple and Developer is the developer providing software wholesale to Apple, it simplifies the transaction somewhat.

It’s simply a B2B relationship where at the end of the month the developer issues a single invoice to Apple for all the software they’ve sold, based on the financial report above.

Apple worries about complexity of individual transactions with customers and handling B2C VAT requirements.

Or am I missing something?

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