Final Checklist- Closed testing round

[Kishore Kumar]

Team,

Quick summary of the actual 2026 Play Console requirement so we run this round correctly the first time, since a rejected/incomplete round costs us another 14 days:

- Minimum 12 opted-in testers, opted in continuously for 14 days. Installed-but-never-opened does NOT count — Google has been rejecting apps since April 2026 specifically for low engagement, not just low tester count. Aim for 14-15 testers so a dropout doesn't put us under 12.
- After 14 days, "Apply for production access" appears on the Dashboard. It's a 10-question form (2 multiple-choice) asking how we recruited testers and what feedback/changes came out of testing. Google flags vague answers ("app is good, no issues") — answers need to be specific, roughly 250-300 characters each.
- This is why doing a second closed-testing round is common advice: it's not a literal Google rule, it's developers who got rejected once for thin answers, then had a real "tester reported X, we shipped Y" story for round two.

Good news: we already have a real, specific example for the questionnaire, from the billing audit — the pending-purchase (UPI) UX issue and refund-revocation bug are exactly the kind of concrete, verifiable fix Google wants to see ("a tester's UPI purchase looked broken/stuck, we added a processing state and fixed entitlement revocation on refund").

Action items for this round:
1. Confirm we have 12+ testers who will actually open and use the app across the full 14 days, not just install it.
2. Ship the billing + UI fixes (see other two emails) as a visible update mid-round, with a real changelog entry — that update is our "changes made from feedback" evidence.
3. When we fill out the production questionnaire, use the specific billing fixes as the answer, not generic language.

Happy to draft the questionnaire answers once the fixes are merged and the round is running.