Check Polar revenue on Mac: orders, MRR and product filters

When a Polar panel on your Mac is useful

If you maintain several products, a quick revenue check can mean finding the right dashboard and resetting its filters. MakerNotch lets you associate a Polar connection with a named project, alongside its code and deployments. Select the project, open Polar, read its metrics, then return to your work.

This guide is about Polar at polar.sh, the payments platform. It is not about Polar Analytics. MakerNotch provides a desktop view of the metrics returned by Polar; use Polar’s dashboard for individual orders, refunds, payouts and customer administration.

Connect Polar with a read-only token

You need an activated copy of MakerNotch, a Polar organization you can access and permission to create an organization access token. See installation and activation if the app is not ready yet.

1. In the Polar dashboard, select the organization that receives your sales. Open its Settings → Developers and create an organization access token. Polar describes this in its access-token guide.
2. Give the token metrics:read only. MakerNotch’s metrics connection does not need permission to create orders, issue refunds or manage customers.
3. In MakerNotch, select the project you want to connect. Open Settings → Integrations → Polar and paste the token in the organization access token field.
4. Leave the optional product UUID empty for organization-wide metrics, or enter the UUID of one Polar product to narrow the view.
5. Run the connection verification and save the connection. The app stores the token in the macOS Keychain and requests metrics directly from Polar.
6. Open the Polar tab. Check the scope label, the date range and the last update time before interpreting the numbers.

An organization access token starts with polar_oat_. Your MakerNotch license key is a different credential and will not work here. The product field takes a UUID, not a product name or checkout URL. Get the identifier from your product in Polar; do not paste a customer or organization ID in its place.

Choose organization totals or a single product

Suppose your organization sells Atlas and Beacon, two example products. If you leave the product field empty in both MakerNotch projects, both connections will show the same organization-wide metrics. Renaming a MakerNotch project does not filter Polar’s data.

To keep the views separate, configure Atlas with its Polar product UUID and Beacon with its own. Then switch between your MakerNotch projects to inspect each context. If a product is sold through another Polar organization, use that organization’s token for its connection.

The current connection accepts one optional product UUID. It does not combine a custom list of products or produce a consolidated total across organizations.

Read the metrics without mixing up revenue and balance

MakerNotch requests a 30-day window in UTC, including the current date, and displays the Polar metrics in USD. The daily chart shows the returned revenue series. Today’s figures can still change.

Metric in MakerNotch	How to read it
Revenue and orders	Polar’s returned totals for the displayed scope and period
Net revenue	The net revenue metric returned by Polar; not an available withdrawal balance
MRR	Monthly recurring revenue at the end of the period, not all revenue collected during those 30 days
Active subscriptions	The subscription metric at the end of the period
A dash	That metric was not returned; do not interpret it as zero

The screenshot contains sample data, not MakerNotch sales results. For reconciliation, check the actual orders and financial reports in Polar. A checkout’s displayed currency, your local day boundary and a different product filter can all make a dashboard comparison misleading. Match scope, dates and currency first.

The integration uses Polar’s metrics endpoint, which provides order and subscription metrics with the metrics:read scope.

Keep the panel updated

Enable automatic updates in MakerNotch’s settings if you want periodic checks. In version 1.1.1, connected integrations including Polar participate in automatic refresh for the selected project. Under normal conditions, the app schedules checks about every minute with the panel open and every five minutes with it closed.

These are scheduled checks, not an instant stream of sales. Sleep, lost connectivity, authorization failures and provider limits can postpone them. Other projects are not all monitored continuously in the background. Use Refresh for an on-demand check and read the last update time to know how recent the displayed data is.

Troubleshoot a connection or an unexpected total

• The token is rejected: check that it is an organization access token, has metrics:read, belongs to the intended organization and has not been revoked. Do not add write permissions to troubleshoot a read-only connection.
• Both projects show the same revenue: inspect the optional product UUID. Empty means the whole organization, even when the MakerNotch project names differ.
• The product filter fails: verify that the value is a product UUID from the organization linked by the token.
• Figures differ from Polar’s dashboard: compare product scope, date range, UTC boundaries and currency. A missing metric is different from a reported zero.
• Figures stopped updating: check the selected project, automatic-update setting, network connection and any provider error. A provider rate limit can require waiting before another request succeeds.

Common questions

Does this require a webhook or a server?

No. This desktop integration reads Polar’s API directly using the saved token. You do not need to configure a webhook to display these metrics.

Can I use it on a Mac without a notch?

Yes. MakerNotch supports Macs with and without a notch, on macOS 14 or later. The app tour shows how the panel fits into your desktop workflow.

Can I see Stripe and Polar in one project?

You can connect both integrations to a MakerNotch project and inspect their views. They retain their own metric definitions and currencies; MakerNotch does not merge them into a reconciled financial statement.

Does connecting Polar replace license activation?

No. Activating MakerNotch unlocks the app. Connecting Polar is an optional integration for your own organization’s metrics. Buying MakerNotch does not give the app access to your Polar business.