SAAS ACCOUNTING 101

We generally recommend that businesses move away from spreadsheets and into an accounting software as soon as possible.

• Day one you start the company and start a bank account.
• Connect that bank account to QuickBooks.
• Start getting the bank feed going into QuickBooks and actually characterize the transactions inside of QuickBooks.

Our SaaS clients have raised over $10 billion 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. 

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

Our Software as a Service companies tend to carefully track their MRR and ARR. However, along with deferred revenue, MRR and ARR calculation and revenue recognition is the most difficult part of providing SaaS accounting services.

ARR, MRR and recognized revenue are difficult for many SaaS companies. While accounting systems can produce automated revenue numbers, someone needs to review them. And if there isn’t a real accounting doing that, the work falls to the SaaS company’s CEO.

In SaaS, the customer never “obtains control” of the software/service, so the general rules of revenue recognition don’t cleanly apply. Instead, accounting rules generally require SaaS businesses to recognize revenue over the contract term. This recognition is the case regardless of when the client pays the SaaS company, so even if the client pays upfront or quarterly, the revenue is recognized the same. We can’t tell you how often we see this mistake when a SaaS company uses an “automated” accounting provider.

Deferred revenue is even more complicated since it’s not as easy of a financial figure to understand. At its most basic level, if your clients are paying ahead of time for services, your company will put a deferred revenue liability onto the balance sheet. And as you deliver this service and recognized revenue, the deferred revenue liability decreases.

The price of incorrectly accounting for revenue and deferred revenue can be high. During due diligence, experienced SaaS VCs will request your financial statements, and they expect the numbers to match (although, reporting a bookings ARR number is 100% legitimate and won’t be reflected in your GAAP financial statements). Public technology companies spend even more time doing due diligence of SaaS revenue recognition, so if you are going to be acquired these numbers matter.

Invest in a good partner to help your business get these right!

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.