Before you read ahead, keep in mind that what follows is simply an experience I had when privately distributing an iOS app to a particular organization and that what I ultimately came across was a bug, unknown to Apple’s engineers at the time. The bug cost me money, time, and, of course, a bit of patience.

In order to understand what follows, I’ll dive into the App Store Connect distribution flow rather simply and quickly:

1. Developer builds an iOS app that is for a particular organization (or business, company, etc.)
2. In order to distribute apps for iOS, the developer must use App Store Connect. App Store Connect is Apple’s distribution or publication service for apps, basically a dashboard that allows you to manage your apps, sign agreements, and role out different versions of your app.
3. Once the developer uploads their app through Xcode, which gets sent to App Store Connect, they can release new versions of that app either publicly or privately. In this case, the private flow is necessary.

The private flow was necessary in this case because the app I was building was branded for one company and was being built specifically for this one company. The user could not sign up through the app and the language on the app was language that only a user from the company could possible understand or get any use out of.