Shopify Partner Billing is changing.

Shopify is always looking for better ways to do things. We’ve been looking at the way Shopify Partner Billing works for a long while and have come up with a few changes that are going to make partners, merchants, and Shopify a lot happier.

The two changes are:

* Recurring Application Charges will now be paid in advance * Partners (i.e. affiliates, theme designers and app developers) will now be paid out twice a month

If you’re an app developer: you can expect to be paid out much sooner! Your customers will love you as they get charged for things they use as soon as possible, i.e. you will endure fewer app-charge related support issues.

If you’re making money as an affiliate, theme designer, or app developer: payouts will be easier to track and predict.

The biggest downside of moving to advance payments is that either the merchant gets billed twice as we catch up or the partner losses a month of revenue if we waive the transition month. Since both options are pretty awful, Shopify has decided to eat the cost so that neither the merchant or partner lose out. Essentially, Shopify is going to be buying 30 days of usage for all installed apps at their current rate. As it stands, this is the cost-equivalent to walking up to a particular car dealership with a suitcase of money and driving off the lot in a very nice, new car.

It hurts, but we feel that it’s the right thing to do. You folks are worth it.

More detail on the changes follows.

Partner payout now twice a month ================================

* The first payment will occur 5 business days after the 15th of any month and covers all activity from the 1st of the month to the 15th. * The second payment will occur 5 business days after the end of any month and covers all activity from the 16th of the month to the last day of that previous month.

By paying you, the partner, out on a regular, consistent basis it means you’ll have an easier time keeping track of the payouts. This will replace the current behaviour of paying you out on a daily basis. The minimum payout limit of $25 USD will remain the same.

If you’re an affiliate or theme designer and have more questions, please get in touch with Dan Eveleigh at [email protected]

Recurring app billing changes =============================

Shopify merchants will now see app charges on their first upcoming invoice after having approved an an active app charge.

This is a huge improvement over the existing approach of adding app charges to the current shop invoice after 30 days of usage. Merchants used to have to wait at least one 30-day shop billing cycle and sometimes two 30-day shop billing cycles before seeing their first app charge. That’s not going to happen anymore – it’s now guaranteed that they’ll see and pay your charge on the same shop billing cycle the app was installed in.

For details and diagrams regarding what happens upon recurring app charge upgrades, downgrades, and uninstalls, please refer to the Billing API reference documentation available at http://api.shopify.com

We invite you to voice any questions or concerns about recurring app billing changes on the Shopify API discussion group at http://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/shopify-api

For any issues best kept private regarding recurring app billing changes or your app in general, please do get in touch with [email protected]