SAAS ACCOUNTING 101

We generally recommend that businesses move away from spreadsheets and into an accounting software as soon as possible. Because well-run SaaS businesses are so metrics driven, it is especially important for SaaS accounting to be done well from the start!

The good news is that pre-revenue SaaS accounting isn’t that hard, and a good founder can handle the basic bookkeeping on their own. 

Steps to get DIY SaaS accounting running

• Day one you start the company and get a dedicated bank account for the business
• Connect that bank account to QuickBooks.
• Start getting the bank feed going into QuickBooks and actually characterize the transactions inside of QuickBooks.
• It also makes sense to get a business credit card as soon as you are funded (get one with no personal guarantee). A dedicated card can feed data directly into QuickBooks, making your accounting easier and more accurate. Our recommendations on the best credit cards for SaaS startups.

Our SaaS clients have raised billions in seed and venture capital funding - so we’ve helped hundreds of SaaS clients complete important financial diligence. We know the accounting metrics a Software as a Service company needs to have ready for diligence. It’s not just ARR, MRR and CAC - the best investors have questions around cohort churn rates, revenue run rates and more. In fact, our team has been interviewed by TechCrunch about the metrics needed to raise rounds and trends in the VC market.

MRR needs to match your recognized revenue

During diligence, your potential investors will compare your historical books to the ARR metrics you share with them. Many companies produce their MRR/ARR metrics out of a billing system, like Chargbee, Shopify, through QuickBooks invoicing, an internal product database, etc. However, these systems don’t always sync perfectly into the accounting books. In fact, a major reason SaaS VCs recommend us to their portfolio companies is that they realize that the current accounting provider is not able to produce accrual based revenue - critical for a recurring revenue business. Make sure your accounting provider can produce GAAP compliant revenue metrics to ensure a smoother fundraising process!

With hundreds of clients who have raised billions of dollars in VC funding, we know what revenue a SaaS company needs to raise a seed, A or B round. Keep in mind that financing for these types of startups is usually based on a number of factors, not just revenue size - in particular, revenue growth matters as well. 

This analysis was done for the height of the recent boom in startup financing. We’ve noticed that in 2022, SaaS companies need higher revenue to raise funding - we’ll update the metrics soon!

We analyzed over 200 fundraises and noticed a distinct trend where the revenue needed to successfully raise a round decreased around the second quarter of 2021. This was certainly a “hot” time to fundraise, and the numbers show it. Here is the data:

ARR at Close of Financing

How much Revenue does a SaaS company need to raise a Seed round?

Prior to the second quarter of 2021, the average SaaS startup needed about $340k of ARR, with a 12 month trailing growth rate of about 600% to raise a seed round of financing. During the hot financing market, starting around Q2 2021, the average company needed just under $60k of ARR and was only growing at about 140% year over year - a tremendous drop on both size and growth metrics. We’d expect that this trend will reverse in the middle of Q1 2022, and that stronger metrics will be needed for the average company to successfully finish a round. 

How much Revenue does a SaaS company need to raise a Series A round?

Prior to the second quarter of 2021, the average SaaS startup needed about $1.8 million of ARR, with a 12 month trailing growth rate of about 330% to raise a Series A. When the venture market heated up, starting around Q2 2021, the average company needed about $1.2 million of ARR and was only growing at about 170% year over year. Once again, this was a tremendous drop on both size and growth metrics. We’d expect that this trend will reverse in the middle of Q1 2022, and that stronger metrics will be required. 

How much Revenue does a SaaS company need to raise a Series B round?

In our analysis of over 200 SaaS companies that raised funding, before Q2 2021, the average SaaS company needed about $11million in ARR, with a 12 month trailing growth rate of about 180% to raise a Series B. In Q2 2021, the average company needed only $3.4 million in ARR and was only growing at 220% year over year. That’s a massive drop in ARR, likely driven by hedge funds moving into the market and bidding aggressively to lead Series B’s. It makes sense that the revenue growth would go up on a smaller ARR base, so at least there is some rationality at the Series B vs. the Series A and Seed numbers we referenced above. Once again, we’d expect that the ARR hurdle would increase in early 2022 as the funding market may be cooling. 

Every business needs a chart of accounts - we’ve got a sample chart of accounts for a SaaS company here for you to use if you’d like. Keep in mind that every business is unique - so you may want to modify it to fit your specific business.

If you don’t know what a chart of accounts is you should probably hire a good bookkeeper, but what it does is translates your general ledger entries into your income statement, balance sheet, etc. It’s like the map of where the specific expenses and other accounting items flow to in your financial statements.

• Revenue recognition
• Sales tax
• Understanding gross profit - parsing server and R&D costs between serving customers and R&D, correctly positioning customer service, etc.
• Customer refunds or upsells
• Deferred revenue
• LTV to CAC and other SaaS-specific metrics

Founders of SaaS companies have several top-line metrics that they may be tracking - bookings, billings and MRR (which gets annualized into the all too famous ARR number). These revenue items can get a little confusing for founders who aren’t experienced finance professionals. This is a great place that an experienced accountant can help a founder stay focused.

Bookings

Bookings is the dollar amount of a signed contract with a customer - it shows written commitment from a customer to purchase your service.

Bookings is not actually defined by GAAP, so SaaS accountants don’t usually produce this metric out of the accounting system - instead, it is produced out of a sales CRM like Salesforce or Hubspot. 

Founders should clearly define what bookings means at their SaaS company, since this is NOT a GAAP defined metric. What exactly constitutes a signed contract? Does this metric include multi-year deals, or just the annualized contract value? 

Bookings really only matters for companies that are signing contracts with clients and then where there is a gap between when the contract is signed and the service period delivery begins. This can happen with enterprise focused companies, in particular. 

Billings

A billing is produced when a company actually sends a bill (really, and invoice) to a client. While invoicing usually lives in a SaaS company’s accounting system, it’s not the same as the revenue item that is officially recognized under the GAAP revenue recognition definition. For a business that bills and collects immediately, this is a much less important accounting metric. Examples would include a consumer-SaaS company that bills and collects through an app store - billing and collection happen at the same time, so there is no need to monitory this metric separately. 

For enterprise companies that track bookings, billings become very important. Bookings indicated the dollar amount of a signed contract with a customer - it shows written commitment from a customer to purchase your service. The book to bill ratio shows how healthy and committed the signed contracts are (that are tracked by the bookings metric). A low book to bill number is an indication that a company is having problems getting signed contracts to convert into live customers. 

MRR - Monthly Recurring Revenue

This is where a founder, their sales team, their accounting system and their SaaS accountant need to be in tight sync! Companies recognize revenue when the service is actually delivered to the client. SaaS accounting rules state that a contract is recognized ratably over the life of the contract live/as the service is used by the customer.

MRR is a difficult metric to fully automate. Companies that try to fully automate their MMR recognition often find that their payments processor has a different metric than their accounting system - something that experienced VCs will notice during due diligence. Read on to learn more about how we think about recognizing revenue. 

Through our work with hundreds of funded startups, we realized that VC backed businesses like to purchase all their services like a SaaS business. That’s why we price our bookkeeping services on a set, recurring monthly level - our clients can know what their basic accounting will cost each and every month. This helps them manage their cashflow, plus it gives our founders less mental overhead when they think about their upcoming expenses.

Getting the books right for a SaaS business is surprisingly challenging. The biggest issue we see with clients that come to Kruze from another bookkeeper is serious mistakes with revenue recognition and deferred revenue - especially from “bot” bookkeepers and from non-SaaS accountants. Because of the way revenue transactions recur in a subscription business, small errors can become big problems if not caught early - including having to restate the balance sheet and income statement.

At Kruze, we combine automated software with experienced controllers and CFOs. We can work with both enterprise and SMB/consumer focused companies with recurring revenue streams. Our custom-built automated software works directly with QuickBooks Online, saving you money through the labor-savings, while putting your financials into an industry standard, 3rd party software so you can take it to any provider or use it with any potential acquirer or auditor.The best SaaS accountants understand the complications of revenue recognition, GAAP expense recognition, enterprise vs consumer software as a service billing systems and more. Plus, accountants specialized in the recurring business model have the ability to help founders think through the cash implications of different billing and pricing plans. Our accounting team has over 11 years, on average, experience, and collectively our team has experience with everything from hardware as a service to recurring app-revenue models to enterprise SaaS contract revenue recognition.

We believe that it’s our team’s job to help save our CEOs time and take care of the basic bookkeeping tasks that other services dump onto their clients. Our SaaS clients have raised billions in venture capital, and former clients have been acquired by massive public companies like Cisco, Apple and others - so we know how to prepare you for due diligence. If you’re ready to work with the top SaaS accountants in Silicon Valley (and beyond), reach out to us. 

The answer to this question involves accrual accounting, which is the best way for startups to handle their accounting. Venture capital firms, venture lenders, investors, and others want to see your financials on an accrual basis. You need to recognize that revenue on a monthly basis as you provide the service over the year. Essentially, you’ll recognize 1/12 of that upfront payment each month. If you recognize the full amount when you received it, that’s called cash accounting. And you’ll have a really good month, followed by 11 months of no revenue. That doesn’t accurately represent your financial position. So you need to book this revenue on an accrual basis.