SaaS metrics

Article Dean Dorton

How the Cloud Delivers Business Agility for the Modern SaaS CFO

Adaptable. Responsive. Flexible. All these are hallmarks of business agility, a company’s ability to quickly and intelligently change to meet customer demands, seize new market opportunities, and maintain a competitive advantage.

Business agility is a critical trait for modern CFOs in all industries, but especially those working in software/SaaS companies. Scaling a subscription-based business, changing criteria for revenue recognition, and other challenges make a powerful, adaptable financial management solution an absolute must-have for SaaS CFOs.

In particular, a cloud-based system like Sage Intacct can help you:

1. Get critical SaaS metrics how and when they’re needed. You can make quicker, more sound strategic decisions with real-time SaaS metrics that go beyond GAAP metrics to include operational metrics. These are captured in an automated process from inside the system and are as complete and accurate as your GAAP financials. Metrics are delivered via a dashboard as performance cards, reports, charts, and graphs that you can use to spot trends, compare to benchmarks, drill down into the source data, and more.

2. Easily manage the complexities of subscription billing. It’s time to eliminate labor-intensive manual calculations with built-in tiered payments and usage-based billing for your customers. You save time and drive revenue with models that keep up with the complexity of your business. From billing across regular periods to non-linear contract billing, like milestones, you have the flexibility to adapt pricing and billing to the best revenue process for your business.

3. Seamlessly integrate your CRM and financial management solutions. Cloud technology lends itself to tight integration, so you can use your CRM system to enter customer and contract information and synchronize with your business financials in real time. Conversely, you can maintain billing templates and subscription schedules in your financial system, while providing billing and payments visibility to salespeople.

4. Automate daily revenue tasks and regulatory compliance. New guidelines for revenue recognition—ASC 606 and IFRS 15—make an already complicated accounting task even more challenging. A good financial management system will include templates and schedules to automatically recognize revenue according to the latest accounting standards. You should be able to recognize revenue and amortize expenses, even as subscriptions and contracts change. Also, dual treatment of contracts according to both ASC 605 and ASC 606 will provide you with immediate visibility into how the new regulations affect your financials.

Business agility comes standard with Sage Intacct and Massey Consulting

With 2019 on the horizon, SaaS companies need a financial management system that enables them to meet new challenges and opportunities as they arise. That’s why modern SaaS CFOs rely on cloud financial management software from Sage Intacct and the business technology experts from Massey Consulting. Take your first step toward business agility with a free consultation from Massey Consulting, your cloud financial management experts.

https://online.intacct.com/WebsiteAssets_ondemand_webinar_tech_savvy_cfo_agility.html?referral=massey

Article Dean Dorton

SaaS companies, especially during times of rapid growth, can quickly lose control of their financials when they can’t see a solid performance picture from patched together reports and disconnected static financial systems.

They do see mountains of spreadsheet workarounds, aging data, slow reporting, and lack of clarity on subscription model performance. However, that only draws away from time, resources and clear decision-making. Growing SaaS companies need access to the best benchmarking tools available and fast visibility into their key metrics. Beyond GAAP, SaaS business are free to build stronger growth strategies, shed a brighter light on forecasting, and stay on top of growth.

No matter what stage of growth your SaaS company is in, the tools are out there to quickly see into your key metrics in a much easier and cost-effective way. Metrics like churn, customer lifetime value, customer acquisition costs, committed monthly recurring revenue, and various schedules of recurring revenue, – monthly or annually- all need frequent examination.  

When your teams can quickly analyze these sections of data in real-time, your company gains optimal leverage of your place in the market and quickly achieves company goals.

Sage Intacct, a best-in-class cloud-based financial management solution, offers the most important metrics to SaaS companies, updated all in one place, 24/7/365. But more important than real-time access is organized visibility. From Sage Intacct’s Digital Board Book, you can see all of your metrics based on your company or project’s unique needs, and none of the ones you don’t.  You can see as much or as little as you like, with the capability to drill down to the transaction.

The Digital Board Book is completely customizable, with data showcased the way you want to see it. Data conveniently displays in charts, graphs and lists, to get the numbers you need, as fast as possible, fully automated.

Because Sage Intacct integrates with Salesforce, you have access to the most current operational data from your dashboard as well. Whether your company is moving through the Super Early Stage of business or approaching IPO, you can detail your Digital Board Book for what you need now, while feeling confident that you can adjust your metrics to fit your growth.

For better control of your financials, contact us. We want to help you find a solution that will shed light on your most important metrics that will scale with your business.

E-Book: Managing SaaS Metrics Throughout the Company Growth Lifecycle

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managing saas metrics through the company growth lifecycle

Article Dean Dorton

When your SaaS business is trying to stay on top of all that added work that comes with rapid growth, along with staying compliant with the new ASC 606 regulations, the right financial management software can make all the difference. If you’re still using an on-premises system, limited in its capabilities to handle your financials, you’ll want to read on.

Sage Intacct, a cloud-based financial management solution, offers automation, generous options, customizations, and the snapshot reporting that SaaS companies need, in all the right places. It delivers what SaaS businesses need most for complex revenue recognition, reallocation, billing, renewals and performance metrics.

Contract and Subscription Billing

Sage Intacct’s built-in usage-based and tiered pricing features within their billing module, is ideal for SaaS. Whether your billing is over regularly-timed periods or nonlinear, you control your billing options in the way that fits your unique business.

  • Sage Intacct has an automatic renewals feature that is designed to trigger contracts approaching their end dates, which means renewal processes require less manual labor and run more smoothly.
  • Automated billing schedule options can be set up to fit a wide range of unique contracts, whether billing happens monthly, yearly, or in a non-linear way with milestones.

Contract Revenue Management

Sage Intacct’s Contract Revenue Management module is the first to offer automated solutions to the ASC 606 and IFRS 15 guidelines. SaaS companies can experience faster, more accurate revenue recognition, even with the new revenue reallocation regulations:

  • Sage Intacct handles revenue reallocation automatically– even for closed periods, so compliance is faster, easier and more accurate.
  • View revenue details right in the contract, with side-by-side comparisons of revenues and expenses under the old and new guidelines for at-a-glance comparisons.

Reporting and Dashboards

Because SaaS growth happens fast, growth strategy needs to happen even faster. Sage Intacct’s reporting features are designed for stakeholders and decision-makers who need to see current numbers, in a readily accessible way:

  • Stakeholders and decision-makers see real-time accurate views into profitability and performance with customized reporting options on-screen and in print.
  • Get cloud-accurate KPIs for SaaS metrics on Sage Intacct’s Digital Board Book, like churn, customer lifetime values, annual or monthly recurring revenue, and customer acquisition costs – all the metrics you need, when you need them.

Whether you’re just noticing your financials becoming harder to manage lately, or you’ve been thinking about making the move to the cloud as a logical next step in your growth, contact us.

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