Signals · announcement
Onboarding preparation — concluded two months ahead of schedule
We announced every deadline in advance, and we met them as announced.
| Date | What was due | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| 15 June 2026 | Telegram channels | Delivered |
| 5 July 2026 | The mobile app | Delivered |
| 30 Sept 2026 | The full system | 1 August |
The mobile app is the most finished piece of software we have — close to a state where there is nothing left the developers would want to change. It is at its best for operators who need a decision quickly: open it, chat, ask for an app, get the thing.
30 September was never a build estimate. It was room to let everything mature and be tested properly. So the surprise is not that the date holds — it is that we no longer need it.
From 1 August 2026, tunbru is ready — as a sole proprietorship, able to invoice — to onboard new organizations.
Which means the remaining work is contracts, not code. And onboarding has two sides: ours, and yours. Yours can start now, before we ever speak — because the slow parts are not ours to speed up.
Five steps, before we meet
Everything below happens at business.apple.com — Apple Business Manager, now branded simply Apple Business. Budget two months for it and you will be comfortable; most organizations need far less.
Get a D-U-N-S number
Your organization needs one to enroll. It is free, and Apple has a lookup tool that tells you whether you already have one. If you do, this step costs you nothing but a search. If you don't, apply and expect up to five business days.
Enroll your organization
Apply at business.apple.com with your organization's work email. Apple verifies the address and the person behind it.
Add your organization details
The legal entity name and the rest of the record. Then it goes to review — around five business days.
Read that as a range, not a promise. Verification runs on Apple's cadence, in batches; a request filed just after one batch closes waits for the next. Nothing you do makes it faster, so file early.
Turn on Custom Apps
Sign in as an Administrator. Select your name at the bottom of the sidebar, open Preferences, and enable custom apps.
This one is quiet and decisive: with it switched off, a private app assigned correctly to your organization simply never appears.
Accept the Apps and Books terms
This is not in the store — it is in your account. Select your name at the bottom of the sidebar, then Preferences → Payments & Billing → Apps and Books, and accept the terms there. Administrator or Content Manager privileges required.
Until they are accepted, no content deploys — free custom apps included. The agreement itself is Apple's Volume Content Terms, the successor to the old Volume Purchase Program terms.
Where the app turns up
Terms accepted, the app arrives somewhere else entirely: Apps and Books → Store → View Store → Custom Apps.
Then send us one number
Your Organization ID. Signed in as an Administrator, select your name at the bottom of the sidebar, open Preferences → Enrollment Information, and it is listed under Organization Information.
That number is the whole handshake. We add it on our side, the application shows up under Custom Apps, and your people install it. Five steps and one identifier — that is the entire preparation.
How your team gets it
Private does not mean single-copy. Once the app is listed under Custom Apps you take licences for it — ours are priced at €0.00, so the only decisions are how many, and which organizational unit holds them. Apple then offers two ways to pass those licences on.
Managed
The licences stay the organization's. You assign them to people or devices through your MDM, and when someone leaves you revoke the seat and hand it to the next person.
The right answer if you already run MDM: the app arrives on the device without anyone having to do anything, and the seat count stays under your control.
Redemption Codes
One-time codes you distribute yourself — email, message, however your team already communicates. The person redeems the code with their Apple Account and the app installs.
The route for organizations with no MDM, at one cost: a redeemed code is spent. It cannot be reclaimed or reused, so a seat leaves with the person who redeemed it.
Either way the app stays private. It is never listed in the App Store, never returned by a search, and cannot be installed by anyone you have not handed a licence or a code to — sharing it with fifty colleagues does not make it public, it makes it deployed.
What can still delay it
The app is in review
Custom apps go through App Review like any other. While a build is in review on our side, it is not assignable — and there is a harder constraint behind it: in App Store Connect, private distribution to an Organization ID has to be set before a build is approved. A build already approved down another route cannot be redirected to your organization after the fact.
An agreement is pending
Apple reissues its terms periodically, and deployment stops until someone accepts the new version. The symptom looks exactly like "the developer hasn't added us yet": an empty Custom Apps tab. Check Preferences → Payments & Billing → Apps and Books first — the acceptance lives in your account settings, not in the store where the app is missing, which is why it is easy to miss.
Propagation
With everything correct on both sides, a newly assigned app still takes time to surface in your Store. Give it a day before treating it as a fault.
Your country
Apps and Books is not available in every country or region. Worth checking yours against Apple's availability list before you start, rather than after step five.
Between speed and patience
Nothing standing between us and an onboarded organization is a build problem any more. What is left is verification queues and integrations with third parties — and talking to an external system means respecting its calendar, not ours.
That is the honest reason we publish the preparation before the invitation. The two months we gained are only gained if you spend them.
30 September is now just a calendar date that has already been surpassed by positive expectation. What falls between here and there is perfectionism — the kind of work that does not move the needle. The job is never finished. The system is.
Work intended to buy back more time for the customer and for ourselves.
Sources Volume Purchase and Custom Apps · Custom app distribution · Apps and Books payment and billing · Availability of Apple programs and payment methods · Apple Developer Forums — custom app not showing in Apple Business Manager