How can I tell if the books are closed in a report?

[MojoWIre]

Hi Everyone,

Forgive me if the answer to this question is already available. I
looked for it in the docs and on this group and couldn't find it. I
want to know how to download a report of yesterday's data via the API,
in such a way that It's guaranteed that the data in it is accurate and
final.

For example if I download a report for yesterday at 12:05am the next
morning will the data I get back be complete and accurate, or will
there still be some data missing because it hasn't been aggregated yet
into Google's reporting platform? If the answer to the previous
question is that the data will NOT be accurate, is there some flag
that I can check to see if the report is complete? That way I can just
try again later if the data isn't ready yet. Will validateReportJob
throw an exception if the data is not complete? Is there some other
way I can tell if the "books are closed?"

If there is no way to do this, does anyone have any recommendation as
to how long I have to wait after midnight to get a report with
complete data in it?

Thanks for the help!
Joe

[AdWords API Advisor]

Hello Joe,

A general rule of thumb is to wait 6 to 8 hours after midnight in the
time zone local to your account before requesting a basic report for
the previous day. This will give the Reports Center enough time to
process the majority of your clicks and impression data for a given
day.

As for determining when a report will have data that is absolutely
final, no, there is no way to do that via the AdWords API. But this is
not just something that applies to reports scheduled via the AdWords
API--reports scheduled via the AdWords front end are functionality
identical, and the same limitations apply.

I have a feeling that you'll hear about the experiences of some other
AdWords API developers who have faced a similar decision about report
scheduling in this thread, but since this is an issue that applies to
AdWords users in general, you can also post about it in the general
AdWords discussion forum at

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/AdWords

Cheers,
-Jeff Posnick, AdWords API Team

[Joe]

Thanks for the reply Jeff. I will set me report downloading job to not
start any earlier than 8am.

For the future, I think it would be great if in both the API and in
the AdWords UI there was a "final" flag letting us know whether or not
the numbers are fully complete and accurate. Not to bring up a
competitor but Yahoo's Reporting API has a method you can call,
similar to Google's validateReportJob that tells you whether or not
the books are closed on all the data you requested. Users can still
download the report if they want to, but they're know if the data is
accurate or not, and can choose to wait if it's not. I would love to
see something like that in AdWords. I'll post to the forum you
suggested and get any feedback.

Thanks again,
Joe

[Rori Stumpf]

On Nov 12, 6:35 pm, MojoWIre <jzu...@estalea.com> wrote:

> Forgive me if the answer to this question is already available. I
> looked for it in the docs and on this group and couldn't find it. I
> want to know how to download a report of yesterday's data via the API,
> in such a way that It's guaranteed that the data in it is accurate and
> final.

To ensure that I get all the data, I run all reports for at least the
last 32 days. That way it catches any adjustments and late
conversions. So far, so good... but I would prefer to have a more
efficient method rather than crunching 30+ days worth of data every
day! If there was a way to include X number of trailing days + any
updated records, that would be best.

FWIW, I wait 6 hours from midnight before running the reports. That
way data is ready when business opens at 8am. The system takes into
account that data less than 30 days old may change.