Bookings Vs Revenue Saas
Saas accounting and finance are the tools you need to invest your cash for growth.
Bookings vs revenue saas. The saas revenue cycle begins with bookings then becomes an invoice and finally recognized revenue. Another important aspect is converting bookings into recognized revenue. Here s a guide to the fundamentals including your crucial saas metrics in the finance world bookings revenue collections etc.
Bookings a booking is when a customer agrees to spend money with you. Bookings are one of the better saas metrics to evaluate sales success as it estimates the revenue that is won by sales including non recurring bookings. Always consider the full duration of the contract.
Considering our sample data set your bookings for each month would be the sum of all the contracts you booked. Finally revenue refers to when you recognize the billings as revenue and you ve actually provided your product service to a client. Your bookings for a specific month is the sum of all the closed deals with different prices and durations.
When your saas bookings are considerably lower than the saas revenues it means tough times lie ahead for your business. In the case of saas the core operation is delivering cloud based services according to the contract and the sla. In saas if you bill your customers upfront billings will be just like bookings but if you bill monthly billings will be just like revenue.
Since you re a saas business you d recognize your revenue over the lifetime of a subscription not at the start when your customer books or gets billed for their purchase. This is particularly necessary as mrr monthly recurring revenue does not count in revenues from non recurring charges. A contract isn t required to have a booking as someone who signs up for a month of your saas offering is committing to that month of service without signing anything.
Of course it will all depends on your specific scenario product service and pricing schema. It s important to understand the steps in the process so that you can speak the same language as your accounting and sales teams. Revenue happens when the service is actually provided.