Hey, this is the Daily Overpass! My name is Eric and I make apps! Now today, I want
to talk about bookkeeping and app sales.
Okay, so last Saturday, I had an email from someone named John who had a
question about accounting and apps. So he said, "Hello Eric,
I wanted to ask - I wanted to say thanks for creating your videos for us app
developers. I have a request for a new video idea. How do you do bookkeeping for
your app sales from different app stores? Does an accountant log every sale and
refund transaction or is there a tool I'm not aware of I could plug in to
QuickBooks?" Thank you, John. Thanks John. it's a really good question and this is
something that I had like a lot of trouble with, especially early on, because
I was asking people about this. Now, I do have an accountant. I've had an
accountant because I started Overpass back in 2004 and I realized early on, I
had no idea what I was doing and I had no interest in learning. And so, as you
know, my accountant handles all of that kind of stuff. But it's changed in
the last few years. So, first of all, it's different when you talk about the App
Store, the Apple App Store and Google Play. Oh, by the way, let me just say
this first, every time I ask anything about taxes, nobody will give me a
definitive answer because nobody wants to be sued. And you know what, I don't
want to be sued either. So, let me just say for those out there, I am NOT an
expert. I'm just gonna tell you what I know and what we do. Okay, so you know,
when you, guys, ask me questions, just always accept the fact that I'm not an
expert on anything. It's like you're asking a friend who's been there
before. So now, that's out of the way. The the app
store, the Apple App Store and Google Play are both different in terms of the
way they're treated with you for tax purposes. Okay, I'm in the UK, so
there's that too. But it's pretty much the same. So Apple is like, your
relationship with Apple is like a B2B relationship so they're the customer,
you're the customer, whichever, but you only have to worry about invoicing the
one app. That's why you don't see any of the information about the
users, you can't grant refunds, you can't do anything like that. Google is a lot
different. Google is more of a B2C relationship, so you do have that going
out to all these different people. And this is one of the things for
the longest time, you know, my accountant didn't know what to do with these app
sales, nobody do it. I'll be and
there's all these discussions on forums. Nobody really knew, but in January of
2015 this is in the UK by the way, so in January 2015 they came up with the
VAT MOSS rule that masses they - we pay VAT on everything here in the UK. So,
it's like 20 percent if you're a VAT registered company. If you make over a
certain threshold then, you have to be VAT registered and you have to charge
that extra 20 percent on top of everything which sucks really. But, you
know, what can you do? so um so they came up with that MOSS,
which stands for VAT mini one-stop-shop, so they had to charge different levels
of that for different places. Now, I don't - and I don't do every transaction
separately, to answer your question, John. So, what they do is every month or every
month or two, I have to go into a Google Play Developer Console and download the
one of those financial reports, the CSV one. I forget which one it is but that
first one where it shows the list based on country and then they go through and
they do all that kind of stuff. And you know what, I'm so glad they're there to
do it. I hate, hate, hate working with taxes. I don't mean that from a fact that
that I have to pay extra money. Although, yeah, obviously that bothers
me. But every time I ask any questions about tax, I always feel like I never get
a straight answer. So anyway, one time I did my own taxes here in the UK but I
thought I'll just do my own personal taxes. I used to do the 1040EZ form back
in the states, you know, it's pretty simple rand I found out
that I owed the government like ten thousand pounds. Now,
there's no way I could pay that. I don't have that kind of money and then I
did it again and I and then I found that I owe them sixteen thousand pounds.
And it was just - it was the wording and I didn't understand what everything
meant. It was like -like what people complain about technology books. It's
kind of like every time I read something financial, I just understand it. So then, I
went to my accountant which already do my business, can you do my
personal tax too. Yeah, I sent him everything and like the government
owed me like 800 pounds or something it was me. I had a refund. From that
moment on, I'm never gonna do any of that kind of stuff again. And even like so, I'm
going off on a tangent here, to answer your question John but this is something else. Like for
longest time when I came out, I'm a US citizen, I don't have
British citizenship, so I still have to do a tax return in the US every
year and for longest time, I was never clear about that and I could find no
clear direction. Nobody I spoke to would give me a clear answer, for longest time
I wasn't doing my US tax return and you know, and I was kind of afraid every
time I'd go back into the country cuz I wasn't sure if I was supposed to or not,
that I would go through passport security to visit family or whatever. And
they said can you come with me sir and it was like a lot of stress. So, in
the end, I found that yes, I was supposed to do it and this was like after living
here for like ten years. But then they had this amnesty thing where they just did
like the last five years. Then I did that a corporate account and they said, "Oh,
we could probably do it for you for about, I told the US gov't., probably
do it for you for about six thousand dollars. Catch up on your back taxes and
everything." Six thousand dollar! I said. "But don't worry, you probably
don't know anything." And I don't know anything. So like it's just, I think
the thing that bothers me about working with taxes is not so much the
paying. Although yeah, it's mainly because I never know what I'm doing. So anyway,
sorry to ramble on there a little bit. You know, when it gets to this kind
of things for the longest time, I was just such so in the dark about it,
because they were just I think they were just intentionally vague about
it to be honest with you. But now, things are a little bit more clear and my
accountant handles everything. Now, when it comes to Amazon, I don't know enough
about Amazon to even know how that works. I don't think I've made hardly anything
on Amazon. I mean, I made a little bit. I'm not sure how the accountant
handled that. But um, you know, I think it's probably the best investment I may
dissipate accountant every month. So anyway, I hopefully that helps you, guys,
out. Now, for those of you, guys, who know differently or if you think I've said
something wrong or if it's different in your country, please put it in the
comments. How are you dealing with this kind of stuff? Because it is something
that there's not a lot of information about out there, at least not that I've
been able to find. Anyway that's it for today. I'll talk to you, guys, tomorrow.