App Store proceeds vs sales: what each money column in App Store Connect means

Sales is what customers paid. Proceeds is what you keep. In Apple’s own words, proceeds are “the Customer Price minus applicable taxes and Apple’s commission” (Apple). The rest of this page is detail around that sentence: which column holds which figure, which rate applies, and why the totals move from one report to the next.

What does each number in App Store Connect mean?

Paraphrasing Apple’s definitions for Sales and Trends, the Summary Sales Report and the financial reports:

The trap in the downloadable report is that both money columns are per unit. Apple’s sample row has 100 universal app purchases in the United States, where “Customers paid .99 USD for each unit and you received .70 USD for each” (Apple). That row is 99.00 USD of sales and 70.00 USD of proceeds. Add up the Developer Proceeds column without multiplying by Units and a busy app’s revenue shrinks to a fraction of itself.

How does a customer price turn into proceeds?

Per unit, the order of operations is:

Developer Proceeds = (Customer Price − tax included in it) × your proceeds rate

Apple’s subscription terms spell out the order: you receive 70% of the price “minus applicable taxes”, or 85% once the higher rate applies (Apple). Tax comes off first, and the rate applies to what is left.

A rough example for a 4.99 EUR price in Germany, where the price includes 19% VAT:

Treat that as arithmetic, not a quote. Apple works out proceeds for each storefront from its own price points and tax rules, so the real figure can be a cent or two off. The same price point earns different proceeds in different countries because the tax inside the price differs, and Apple notes that it “may need to adjust prices or your proceeds due to changes in tax regulations or foreign exchange rates” (Apple).

What commission rates does Apple charge?

Under Apple’s standard App Store terms:

The Small Business Program is for developers who, together with any associated developer accounts, earned no more than 1 million USD in proceeds in the previous calendar year and stay under it in the current one. You have to enrol; it isn’t automatic. Apple adjusts proceeds fifteen days after the end of the fiscal month in which it approves you. Cross the threshold during a year and the standard rate applies to future sales.

For subscriptions, the 85% rate follows days of paid service, counted per subscription group (Apple). Free trials don’t count toward the year; paid introductory offers do. If a subscription lapses and the customer comes back within 60 days, the count resumes. After 60 days it starts again. In the Sales report, rows earning the higher rate carry Rate After One Year in the Proceeds Reason column.

These are the standard terms. Storefronts in Japan and the European Union run under separate Apple business terms with their own rate tables, and Apple has changed both since 2024. If a large share of your sales comes from either, check those pages before modelling proceeds with the percentages above.

Where does tax come out?

Apple’s definition of Customer Price says it is “inclusive of any applicable taxes we collect and remit” (Apple). So sales, built from Customer Price, includes that tax, and proceeds never do. When you compare two storefronts at the same price, the one with the higher VAT or GST pays you less.

Income tax and withholding are a separate layer. They don’t appear in Sales and Trends at all. Financial reports carry a Taxes and Adjustments field, and Apple applies any withholding tax when it makes a payment (Apple).

How do refunds show up?

In the Sales report, a refund row has negative Units and a negative Customer Price, while Developer Proceeds stays positive (Apple). Multiply proceeds by units, as you do for every row, and the refund subtracts itself. A Units value of 0 can mean a partial refund.

Sales and Trends folds processed refunds into its daily unit totals and shows them as negative units; to see the refund count on its own, add a filter. A refund appears on the day Apple processes it, which is rarely the day of the original purchase, so a quiet day can show negative proceeds.

Why doesn’t Sales and Trends match Payments and Financial Reports?

Apple’s short answer is that Sales and Trends provides next-day data, while Payments and Financial Reports provide final proceeds (Apple). The reasons underneath, from Apple’s page on differences in reporting tools:

• Sales and Trends records a transaction when the customer starts it. Financial reports include only settled transactions where Apple collected the payment, so a purchase late in one month can land in the next fiscal month, and a payment Apple never collects never appears.
• Financial reports follow Apple’s fiscal calendar, whose months run Sunday to Saturday and don’t line up with calendar months. Sales and Trends reports use Pacific Time days.
• Sales and Trends estimates USD amounts from a rolling average of the previous month’s exchange rates. Financial reports use the rate that converts each currency to your bank account’s currency.
• Taxes, adjustments and withholding appear only on the financial side.

Use Sales and Trends to see direction: which app sold, in which country, this week against last. Use the financial reports when the number has to match a bank statement.

Where AppMeta Pulse fits

AppMeta Pulse is the iPhone dashboard I built for the daily look at these numbers. It downloads the daily Sales report and the subscription reports through the App Store Connect API with a key you create, and keeps Apple’s names for things. The main amount is Proceeds by default, described in the app as Apple’s payout after commission; in Settings, under Display, you can switch it to Sales, the full customer price. Refunds are counted from rows with negative units. Each row is converted from its own currency into the display currency you pick, using the European Central Bank’s monthly average rates.

Pulse reads Sales and Trends, not Payments and Financial Reports. Its figures are next-day numbers with the same caveats as the Sales and Trends page itself. For subscription revenue on a monthly footing, the earlier post on calculating MRR from the Subscription report covers the formula, and this post explains why a quick revenue check belongs on the phone.