Notes for owners · Industry-Specific Software Guides
What a SaaS Company Should Track Every Month Beyond MRR
Beyond monthly recurring revenue, a SaaS company should track new, expansion and cancelled accounts, failed payments, trial follow-up, churn reasons and repeat support requests. Together they explain why revenue moved. GullySystem builds a back office that holds these on one customer record. A very early product can start with a sheet.
Ganesh HS, Strategy and Technology, GullySystem · · 3 min read
Recurring revenue, split by what moved it
One total tells you little. The useful view splits it into new accounts, expansion, contraction and cancellations, by plan. Two months with the same total can mean very different things.
Agree the counting rules early. Decide how annual plans, discounts, add-ons and paused accounts enter the figure. Write the rules down once, and every month’s report then reads the same way.
- New accounts by plan
- Upgrades, seat additions and add-ons
- Downgrades and removed seats
- Cancellations, with the date and plan
Failed payments and renewals due
Payments fail for ordinary reasons: an expired card, a mandate limit, a declined transaction. If nobody follows up, an account stays live for weeks without paying.
List every failed payment with the contact, the last attempt and the next follow-up. Add the renewals due in the coming month. The gateway holds the payment facts, and the list turns them into work for a person.
Trials that end without a conversation
A trial is a lead with a clock on it. Teams that used the product often lapse because nobody reached out before the end date.
Track each trial with its start date, what the account has used and who has been contacted. Review trials ending within the next few days. Note why a trial did not convert, even if the reason is just no reply.
- Trial start and end dates
- Features the account actually used
- Last contact and who made it
- Reason recorded when it does not convert
Churn reasons in one place
Customers cancel, and the reason sits in an email thread. Product never sees a pattern, because the pattern is spread across inboxes.
Add a reason field to every cancellation: price, missing feature, switched tool, closed business, or no reply. Count the reasons each month. A repeated reason is a product or pricing question that the founder can act on.
Support requests grouped by cause
Support receives how-to questions, defects and feature requests in one stream. A bug reported by several customers reaches engineering as several separate emails.
Tag each request by type, and group repeats under one issue. Engineering then sees how many customers a defect touches. The same count helps product rank feature requests by who asked, rather than who asked loudest.
Monthly SaaS review sheet
One page per month with recurring revenue split into new, expansion, contraction and cancelled accounts. Beneath it, list failed payments, trials ending soon, cancellation reasons and the top repeat support issues. Go through it with the founder at the start of each month.
Open a blank worksheet to printQuestions owners ask
Does a back office replace our payment gateway?
No. The gateway still collects the money. The back office reads payments and subscription events from it, so the customer record shows what was paid and what failed.
Can the same software build our product?
Not on its own. A back office for your accounts is separate from your product. Product development is a different service, scoped on its own.
Is a spreadsheet enough for a new SaaS product?
For the first few dozen accounts, often yes. The case for a customer record grows with plans, seats, renewals and a support stream that no one person can hold in their head.
Should churn be counted by accounts or by revenue?
Track both. Account churn shows how many leave. Revenue churn shows how much they were paying. Your own plan mix decides which one the founder watches more closely.