For more posts in this series, see the series index.

Development is done and not just done, but done-done. You have logged into the Dashboard and want to submit your application – there are two things that must be done PRIOR to you publishing successfully, and both are on the right hand side menu under Profile.

Payout

Payout is used to setup which account money will be paid into – if this is not setup your app will not even go through certification! You may think this only applies to those doing paid apps – it doesn’t. ALL apps, even free ones, need this setup first.

When you do payout setup it is going to ask you for one of three values (from what I can gather):

• Credit card CVV – the simplest option.
• Transaction amount – Microsoft will put through a transaction on your account and you need to put in the cents portion of that amount.
• Transaction code – Microsoft will put through a transaction on your account and you will need the magic code in the description.

Below is a screen grab from my account statement, so if they asked for amount it would be 29 and if they asked for code is would be 851.

There is two final points around payout that are vital to remember:

• Limited attempts: You get a few attempts to put the number in. Get all these wrong and your account is locked. You will need to deal with support who must escalate for you to other teams and this will take DAYS.
• Transactions take time: If you are not lucky enough to get a CVV check then you will get the one of the transaction checks. These can take time to appear, especially if you are not in America – so if you do not see it immediately, wait two days. DO NOT TRY AND GUESS because you will hit your limited attempts.

Tax

The second issue is tax – once again this must be completed by EVERYONE. However having invalid tax forms will not block certification, it will merely block publishing. The form is easy to use but an annoyance is that even after you complete it the status will remain invalid. It stays invalid until it is verified by the system. So read invalid as either not done or not processed.