Stripe Connector for the Apple App Store

The Stripe Connector for the Apple App Store lets you automatically import subscription purchases from the Apple App Store into Stripe Revenue Recognition.

The benefits of using Revenue Recognition for the Apple App Store are:

• Near real-time availability: Set up daily, automated imports from the Apple App Store. This minimizes manual work and reduces corrections at month-end.
• Increased accuracy: Improve recognition accuracy by considering time zone differences.
• Improved refund treatment: Associate refunds with original purchases, and generate more accurate refund journal entries that adjust deferred revenue instead of treating refunds as negative line items.
• Audit by subscribers: Break down numbers on a per subscriber basis to help with audits.

Get started

To import data from the Apple App Store, set up the Stripe Connector for the Apple App Store. It can take up to 24 hours for your reports to reflect imported data.

Backfill historical data

When you onboard, the connector backfills up to 1 year of historical data.

Handle Apple transactions previously imported through manual data import

If you previously imported data from the Apple App Store using the Revenue Recognition data import feature, you want to avoid double-counting Apple revenue upon switching to the automated connector.

To migrate from manual data imports to the connector, delete all Apple transactions from the past year that you manually uploaded using data import CSVs. The connector replaces these transactions with the entries it generates during import.

Examples

Subscription purchase

A subscriber purchases 1 unit of a News Plan Monthly subscription on December 3. The subscription is valid for 1 month, which means the service period is December 3 to January 3. The customer pays 32 USD, but the developer receives 31 USD.

The developer proceeds count toward revenue rather than customer price, because the customer price also includes taxes and Apple commissions. Revenue is billed and paid in full on December 3. Stripe recognizes most of the revenue in December, and a smaller portion in January.

At the end of January, the summary might look like this:

Subscription refund

A subscriber purchases a 3-month subscription on January 2. The service period is January 2 to April 2. The customer pays 91 USD, but the developer receives 90 USD. On February 1, the customer receives a full refund.

During a full refund:

• The customer receives their money back.
• Recognized revenue is offset by the refunds in a contra revenue account.
• The unused portion of the subscription revenue is cleared from the deferred revenue.

The refund reduces the external assets balance by 90 USD. The customer received 30 days of service, so you add 30 USD to the external refunds balance. The remainder of the deferred revenue–60 USD in this example–is also cleared.

At the end of April, the summary might look like this:

Free trial

Stripe doesn’t generate journal entries for free trials.

Limitations

The most detailed level of reporting that Stripe can provide is audit by subscriber. We can’t provide an audit by invoice view because the financial reports from the Apple App Store don’t include invoice IDs.

Stripe also can’t book tax liability and Apple commissions because Apple doesn’t provide this data.

Audit numbers

To view account balances for an Apple subscriber:

1. Click a number in the Monthly summary section to view a list of customers. Apple subscribers have names that consist solely of numbers.
2. Click any Apple subscriber to enter the audit view.