Just updated: Dev Center app and financial reporting

Today I have a few updates for you including a new release of the Dev Center app, an updated financial summary report, and several reliability improvements for reporting and app submission in Dev Center. Apologies for how long it’s been since my last post; the team has been focused on longer-term improvements that I’ll talk about in future posts.

We’ve recently had cases in which app submissions could get delayed in “processing submission” or “pending signing” for longer than usual, and other cases where attempts to cancel a submission would result in a “can’t cancel” error. We’ve taken fixes over the past few weeks to address these errors. As always, we’ll continue monitoring the system to keep submissions flowing smoothly.

Over the past week you may have experienced download report data being stale for multiple days. We know how much you care about timely reporting, and we’re investing in additional monitoring, proactive notifications, and increasing the reliability of our systems to reduce the frequency of such disruptions in the future.

Dev Center app update

I’m pleased to announce an update to the Dev Center app, which continues to be the best way to track your app downloads, crashes, reviews, and revenue information directly from your Windows Phone. The highlights of this release include:

1. Filter reviews by market: Now you can filter reviews by market, just like on the Dev Center website.
   
2. App submission status: The details screen for each app now shows you the status of the current submission for your app in Dev Center.
   
3. Quick access to “share app” and “view in Store” from the apps list: Just tap and hold in the apps list.
   
4. Updated Microsoft Account sign-in page: We’ve updated the sign-in page to support the latest and greatest Microsoft Account sign-in experience. Aside from making the sign-in experience consistent with other apps that use your Microsoft Account, this also provides native support for two-step verification.
5. Windows Phone 8 version: Now we put your whole screen to good use. Owners of 720p phones rejoice!

We hope you enjoy this update to the app. These changes were driven by your feedback so please continue sending it our way. You can provide feedback straight from the About page within the app.

Improved Dev Center financial summary reporting

The Dev Center financial summary now includes “Proceeds since last payment” to show what you have earned but have not yet been paid. This amount represents both your reserved and pending balances.

• Reserved represents proceeds that are currently held and not yet available for payment. Typically these proceeds come from the most recent sales. On average, funds remain in this category for about 30 days.
• Pending represents proceeds that have been held long enough to move out of the reserved category, and will be scheduled for payment the following month.

There are no changes to payout requirements. To be eligible for payout, your proceeds (net receipts minus the Store fee) available for payout during a given month must exceed USD$200 or its equivalent in local currency. Please see the Dev Center documentation and Application Provider Agreement to learn more.

The Dev Center financial summary now also shows thestatus of your payments. If a payment was unsuccessful, you’ll see “Unsuccessful payment” in the table. If you see this in your financial summary, make sure your tax profile and payment account are complete, accurate, and up-to-date. If you need assistance, please open a support ticket in Dev Center.

We hope you find these changes helpful. As always, we continue to consider what you say in the Windows Phone Dev Center UserVoice forum when we determine our future investments. Thank you to all who have contributed there; we’re listening.