I’m hoping someone can help point me in the right direction here. We’ve had our Shopify app rejected a couple of times now because the reviewer said we haven’t implemented shopify billing.
Our app is free to use and for our enterprise users who don’t pay to use our platform. The issue is each time Shopify review our app, they create a patient account on SleepHQ where we do charge. They then reject our app because it has off platform billing. However, we have very clear instructions in our app submission that explains this and tells the reviewer not to create a patient account. We instead tell them they need an enterprise account which has no self serve account creation. We give them account credentials to use in our app submission and a specific list of instructions on exactly what to do to test the functionality of the app.
Our app is basically just a way for them to connect their shopify store into their enterprise SleepHQ account. They will sell products on their shopify store and associate the purchase with users in their SleepHQ account. We don’t change the enterprise users for their accounts. They buy products off us wholesale and sell them directly to their patients and that’s how we make money.
I’ve submitted our app multiple times and I keep getting nothing but a screen recording showing the reviewer logged in to a patient account.
This has been a very frustrating experience as we have enterprise customers who are waiting to use this app to start selling our products on Shopify and right now they’re blocked or have to do a manual association on every product they sell.
Is there any way to help the app reviewer understand what our app is and that there is no billing associated with it.
@Adam_Pallozzi I think youre arguing the wrong point, and thats why resubmitting isnt working.
Youre arguing the reviewer ignored your instructions. Theyre applying requirement 1.2.1, which says apps using off platform billing cant be distributed unless Shopify has notified you otherwise. From where they sit, your app connects merchants to a platform that charges money. Whether they used the account you provided doesnt change that finding, so better instructions will keep producing the same rejection.
The argument that actually helps you is on Shopifys own best practices page. For apps selling goods to merchants, it says to use a PCI compliant gateway for those goods and put other app costs through Shopify billing. Your enterprise customers buy physical products from you wholesale and resell them. Thats a goods transaction with a supplier, not an app charge, and Shopify explicitly expects that to sit outside the Billing API.
So the case to make is not the reviewer did not follow instructions. Its the app is free, no merchant is ever charged for using it, and the only money changing hands is wholesale product purchases, which per your own best practices belong on a PCI compliant gateway. Say it in those words and cite both pages.
Two other things worth knowing.
Theres an approval route rather than an argument. In your app pricing settings theres an option confirming you have approval to charge merchants outside the Billing API. Ask Partner Support directly for that approval for your use case, with the reasoning above. Thats a different conversation to the review queue and its the one that ends this.
And stop resubmitting. Each new submission almost certainly lands with a different reviewer who has no memory of the last three, so youre getting a fresh person reading the same notes and reaching the same conclusion. Reply on the existing thread instead and ask them to cite the specific clause theyre applying. Making it a named requirement rather than a general impression is what turns it into something you can actually respond to.
One last thought on the patient account. The reviewer may not be disobeying you so much as checking what a merchant could reach on their own. If patient signup is discoverable from the same place the app points at, theyll find it every time regardless of what your notes say. Worth thinking about whether the enterprise path can be the only thing reachable from inside the app.
Hey @Adam_Pallozzi ,
I think the main issue here may be that the reviewer is testing the app with the wrong type of account rather than there actually being a billing requirement.
If the Shopify app doesn’t charge merchants and your revenue comes from wholesale sales to your enterprise customers, I would make that distinction very clear in the submission. I’d put a clear note at the very beginning saying not to create or use a patient account, then provide the enterprise credentials and exact testing steps.
Since the reviewer has already repeated the same mistake, I’d also contact Shopify Partner Support and point out that the app is being tested with the wrong account despite the instructions provided in the submission. That may help get the review routed to someone who understands the actual business model.
Thank You!
thanks guys, I just got on live chat and spoke to someone. They are going to escalate it up to someone else.
We already had the exact instructions in the app submission but the first review person didn’t follow them. The person on chat today was very helpful and has promised to make it clear in the escalation what the issue is. Fingers crossed we get this resolved soon.