Differences between daily reports and monthly payments on App Store revealed

While some developers on the App Store have noticed a difference between the daily or weekly payment reports calculated by Apple and the monthly money they actually receive, it appears the conflict comes down to credit card transactions.
AppFigures has done some digging around and discovered just why Apple has always claimed its reports shouldn't be used for financial purposes.
Download versus transaction
According to the site, the daily and weekly payment reports record the downloads - and therefore the payments as they happen, but the end of the fiscal month financial reports detail credit card transactions only when they clear with the bank.
This means downloads made and paid for at the end of the month will show up on that particular daily or weekly payment report, but won't actually turn up in the financial report until the following month.
AppFigures concludes that, because credit card charges take more than a day to clear, and there's already a day's delay between when a download occurs and when it is posted, downloads made in the last 3-6 days of the fiscal month usually won't show until the following financial report.
[source: AppFigures]