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Clarity

Ben Murray

Centennial, CO

Corporate finance executive and MBA/CPA with over 20 years of progressive experience in finance and operational management within small technology firms to global multi-billion dollar organizations. Demonstrated ability to link the key metrics between finance and operations that drive corporate transparency and real time fact-based decision making. Strong background in developing financial infrastructures necessary to support organizations and management teams. Check out my free SaaS resources at TheSaaSCFO.com, SaaSin60.com and TheSaaSAcademy.com.

Core Qualifications:
SaaS Financial Statement Modeling
Accounting & Financial Management
Mergers & Acquisitions
Growth Strategy Development
Financial Analysis & Reporting
Staff Management & Development
Performance Measurement
International Operations

$4.17/min

1 Call

1 Review

30 minutes
Avg. call

SaaS Business Strategy Enterprise Software Budgeting Business Modeling Strategic Forecasting

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Saas CFO

Check out my free resources at TheSaaSCFO.com, SaaSin60,com and TheSaaSAcademy.com.

Answers 7
Reviews 1

Answers

Ben Murray answered

For a SAAS product company, do medium or large size clients pay using credit cards .

We mainly invoice our enterprise customers who pay by check or ACH. However, some do have purchase cards that they use and make payments as high as 100K on a credit card.

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SaaS - Enterprise & SMB B2B

SaaS Sales

Ben Murray answered

How important is being in a similar "pricing range" as your competitors in a SaaS business?

In my experience and industry, it helps to be in the ballpark as the competitors but not the same. If you are much higher, you better have a great story and message. If you can't differentiate your product for the price sensitive buyers then it is hard to stay in the running. Pricing is a hard topic and you might have to experiment a bit.

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Pricing Strategy

Pricing Analysis

SaaS

Ben Murray answered

Should we convert our perpetual license holders to SaaS?

With a low price point, I think you might have trouble converting them to a subscription. Like you mentioned, I think you need to offer a perk or repackage the product with a new name and a few more hooks (features, better value) to get them to convert to a new pricing model which would be more expensive for them in the long run.

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SaaS

Enterprise Software

Software Licensing

Ben Murray answered

What are the most important metrics early on for a B2B SaaS startup?

Customer acquisition and retention. And your customer acquisition cost (CAC). Will it be scalable at some point or are the sales economics just not there. I.e. you continue to burn cash even though ARR is growing.

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Start-ups

Ben Murray answered

Does anyone know of a good SaaS financial projection template for excel/apple numbers?

Yes, I share all my SaaS excel models at www.TheSaaSCFO.com. All are free to download. I have a revenue model, expense model, and many SaaS metrics models.

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Financial Modeling

Fundraising

SaaS

Ben Murray answered

How do most SaaS platforms track revenue? Realized revenue vs. sales.

I see Sales and Revenue as the same thing. I think when you say Sales you are referring to Bookings? We track bookings (signed contracts) and GAAP revenue by customer. I think it is important to track both and you will be asked for your average ARR or MRR per customer and even a waterfall of GAAP revenue by customer.

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Financials

Finance

Financial Reporting

Ben Murray answered

What are some tried-and-true metrics for enterprise/ARR-based SaaS companies?

I agree. I live in a long sales cycle world for software subscriptions so the typical monthly SaaS metrics don't tend to tell me much or work.

I think the same metrics are important but you might calculate them on different time horizons.

I still look at net churn by customer and dollar, ARR, CAC, LTV, ACS, and more.

You can download a lot of these Excel templates for free at my blog. www.TheSaaSCFO.com.

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SaaS - Enterprise & SMB B2B

Enterprise Software

Cloud Applications

Reviews

Good ideas.

Matthew Bennett Source: Clarity

Member since July 2016