What’s the difference: cohort & calendar view?
Both reports are built from the same payments. They differ in the date they hang a payment on, which is why the same period can show two different totals.
Cohort Marketing Performance
Groups everything by when the user arrived. All revenue an acquisition ever generates stays on that date, however long after it is paid.
- Mobile: the cohort date is the install date — the install the purchasing session belongs to. A re-install is a new install and opens a new cohort date.
- Web: the cohort date is the first-visit date of the browser the purchase was made in.
Credit for the acquisition is resolved separately from the date: it follows the visit that sold the subscription. If that visit or install looks organic but the same user had a paid one within the previous 90 days, the paid channel takes the credit.
Use it to judge acquisition: LTV, ROAS, payback and campaign quality.
Calendar Insights
Groups everything by when the event happened — the payment, the refund, the dispute — with refunds and chargebacks as negative amounts on their own day. Covers web and mobile.
Use it to reconcile revenue and to see refunds, fees and taxes day by day.
Two things to keep in mind: dates after today carry predicted subscription revenue, not facts; and every amount is converted into your reporting currency and shown in your reporting timezone.
The same user in both views
A user installs (or first visits) on 1 July and pays on 15 July:
- In the cohort report, the revenue appears on 1 July.
- In Calendar Insights, it appears on 15 July.
Neither is wrong — one answers "was this cohort worth buying?", the other "how much money came in that day?".
Practical rules
- Reconciling with a store, Stripe, PayPal or another provider? Use Calendar Insights, on both web and mobile — it is the view dated the way they are.
- Judging campaigns, creatives or funnels? Use the cohort report.
- Never compare a cohort total with a payment-system export for the same dates — they are answering different questions.
- Expect small differences against any provider export even in Calendar Insights: amounts are converted to your reporting currency, store commission and part of the processing fees are modelled rather than read from a settlement report, and test and internal payments are excluded.
- On iOS, recent cohorts keep filling in for a few days: SKAdNetwork data arrives late, so installs and attributed revenue for the latest days keep moving.
