First of I apologize if this is the wrong place to ask about this. I recently launched my first Shopify App. It is currently unlisted and is only being used by the handful of stores who requested it in the first place. In the app history I am seeing the subscriptions activated but the earnings aren’t showing in the earnings history or total earnings. In my (limited) experience, they posted to account within 24 hours but it has been a few days and they still aren’t reflected. This is very annoying and would make it hard for us to asses app performance at scale. How long does it usually take for the earnings to show in the partner account?
Hi Sinan,
I’ll DM you directly on this to see why subscriptions are not showing.
The earnings wont be reported to you until the app charges are actually paid by the merchant. It’s important to note how Shopify handles app subscription payments, which is by including them on the shop’s next billing invoice.
In practice, this means that your earnings will generally show in the Partners Dashboard within 1 - 30 days, depending on how the app charge coincides with the shop’s normal Shopify billing cycle.
I see. Thank you for the information. I was under the impression that the merchants got charged immediately (since 30 day cycles of apps might fall on different dates) and that it would reflect in the account immediately as well. It is kind of annoying there isn’t a way to see to this projected revenue (similar to the “next payout” feature for the merchants)
You can find more about this in Shopify’s merchant documentation for app charges: https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/your-account/manage-billing/your-invoice/apps
Just to clarify in my partner dashboard I do see ‘pending payout’ data which includes payments that have actually been made by merchants. Having projected data for charges that have been issued but not yet paid would be interesting, but would not be 100% reliable since technically merchants could close a shop or not pay a Shopify invoice, meaning you would not actually receive that payment.
Thank you for the link. This seems a little bit weird. So let’s say the merchant’s billing cycle is from 1st to 1st. If I am understanding this correctly, if the merchant installs the app on the 29th, they get billed for this app on the 1st 2 days later. Then their app use on the 1st gets added to their bill 30 days later, meaning essentially they paid full price for 2 days of use?
technically merchants could close a shop or not pay a Shopify invoice
Sure but this would mean their account would be frozen, no? Wonder how common of a case this is. As a side note, I think this is all the more reason apps should be billed in advance. We are still paying for the infrastructure they use in advance, and if they bail without paying their invoice, we are left having to shoulder that cost
The app would technically maintain their own separate 30 day billing cycle, but the charges only get added to the normal Shopify invoices. Regardless of how the app and Shopify billing cycles line up, app subscription charges are always issued on the first day of the app billing cycle and added to the following Shopify invoice.
In your example, if the app’s billing cycle starts on the 29th and the merchant pays on the 1st, they are paying for a full 30 day cycle from the 29th-27th, not just for the 29th-1st.
And yes, you’re correct that if a merchant doesn’t pay their Shopify invoice, the shop should be frozen these shops should not necessarily be able to get continued use of the app for free, and if they try to re-activate their shop they would still be responsible for past charges. We’ve found this to be relatively uncommon and not a significant problem.