iTunes Sales Fun!

Viewing your iTunes sales...

 The road to iTunes App vendor is hell.

Its taken quite a bit of time to set everything up: establish Synthodeon's credentials with Apple, get bank accounts, get apps ready for sale, get them approved, get them into the store.

Over all on the Apple side, while its been a slog, its worked pretty well - no complaints.

So there's a significant lag between the time you set up your vendor status and get the first app published.  You have bank information to confirm, it takes some time to figure out how to use iTunes connect which is the web interface, and so on.

Apple apparently pays quarterly so once you get everything hooked up you have to wait for your first payment up to several months - provided, of course, you sell anything.

Well, we've been successful and sold things.

But now there's only one small problem.

All this took so long that the bank "closed" the account in the interim due to inactivity.

Not inactivity on my part - I have been working my ass off to get this all together and set up.

But financial inactivity - again not even on my or Apple's part: Since a month before the account was closed there's been plenty of sales activity.  It just hasn't translated into bank account activity.

So the other day I go to log onto my account at the bank and its not working.

So I call the 800 number...

"Sorry sir, the account is closed."

Huh?

WTF?

I guess the bank doesn't understand how big companies work.

Now I will be in hell.

Where did the payment go?

Did it get rejected on the Apple end?

Did it go through only to land in some bank limbo?

How many frustrating days of iTunes support emails and bank emails will it take to resolve the issues?

Of course, with today's tight corporate web and internet security no one can talk to anyone else, let alone email or anything, so everything will require me to fiddle with it: back and forth, back and forth...

I imagine that this particular business has very few businesses like the ones I am involved with: high tech and big companies, e.g., Apple.

Over the years I've worked with many, many very large companies and its always the same - some companies, large, nameless printing companies in Milwaukee, for example, were the same way.  Weeks of applying to be a vendor - doing more work than you were going to actually get paid for just so you could get the work and paid.

The good news is there at least were sales.

More than I expected.

But there's always a price for success....  (and no, no one showed up from the government to "help" me.)

So instead of working on the new app I am slogging through bank hell with the old one...

Edit Sat Aug 4, 2012:  If a payment is rejected you get a notification on iTunes Connect.  Well, the bank got the payment (finally someone there checked) and is "in the process of rejecting it."  My contact at the bank will try and stop that in the morning on Monday.

Edit Mon Aug 6, 2012: Too late.  The bank rejected the payment for no reason.  What supposedly happens now is that the payment is returned to Apple.  I will get notified.  At that point, since I know the bank info is correct I will have to figure out how to have it resubmitted.