SaaS Revenue Recognition Guidelines
Introduction
SaaS Revenue recognition is imperative for tracking the financial health of your business. It is worth mentioning here that revenue provides a glimpse of the company’s financial performance. If you want to strengthen a company’s bottom line, you need to increase revenue.
You need to have an accurate picture of revenue to increase revenue significantly. Even though SaaS business has a competitive edge over the traditional business models in many ways, recognizing revenue accurately here is a bit complex and cumbersome.
For this reason, we have decided to nail the accounting process employed in the SaaS business for revenue recognition.
As an owner of a SaaS business, if you recognize the cash earned from the bookings inaccurately, you’ll end up with a gloomy picture of the company’s income.
What is SaaS Revenue Recognition?
Revenue recognition is the generally accepted accounting principle (GAAP) that specifies rules for revenue recognition. Furthermore, it aids the accountants in recording revenue correctly.
However, complexities often arise while determining revenue while converting the cash receivable from service subscriptions into revenue.
To keep that in perspective, let’s take some real-life examples:
1. Your customer bought a subscription plan of $36,000 and paid you immediately. Can you recognize that $36,000 as revenue?
2. A current customer upgraded their annual contract of $36,000 and edstarted paying you $3,000 monthly. Can you recognize the $36,000 as revenue immediately?
The answer to both of these scenarios is a big no. In the first scenario, even though you have $24,000 in your account, the customer hasn’t rendered the service for a full year. You can only recognize $3,000 per month as revenue till the expiration of the contract.
Example 2 is relatively less complex because you receive $3,000 monthly from the customer and have agreed to deliver the service. Thus, you are free to recognize $3,000 as revenue per month.
Simple speaking, revenue recognition is an accrual accounting principle that defines how and when you should record business sales as revenue.
Your business revenue doesn’t necessarily need to be equivalent to an amount in the pipeline or your bank account. When a customer pays you for a service that hasn’t y has been rendered, this amount becomes a liability for the company and is known as unearned revenue.
You could recognize that payment as revenue upon providing the customer-agreed service. SaaS revenue recognition is paramount to the success of every company, irrespective of its size and customer base, particularly for companies contractually obliged to report their financials to their shareholders.
For a traditional brick-and-mortar shop, you could immediately recognize that payment as revenue when you receive a payment for goods. On the other side of the spectrum, revenue recognition in a subscription-based SaaS demands a different accounting practice.
A business pays the upfront cost for a service that continues for months or years. However, businesses can only recognize the payment as revenue if the contract continues till the expiration date.
Key Guidelines for SaaS Revenue Recognition
If your SaaS Company starts a contract with a customer to provide a specific service, you must comply with the ASC-606. These principles were framed by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).
These principles aim to adhere to the generally accepted accounting principles meticulously.
These SaaS revenue recognition principles frame the process for revenue recognition during the transfer of service using the following steps:
Step 1: Identify the Contract with the Customer
This specifies the criteria to be met when initiating a contract with the customer to provide a specific service.
Step 2: Identify the key obligations in the contract terms
It describes all the performance obligations when the contract is being framed. If the service doesn’t meet the customer’s satisfaction, the company should have to compensate the customer.
Step 3: Evaluate the transaction price.
It specifies the factors that need to be taken into account during the evaluation of the price.
Step 4: Allocate the transaction price
This defines how the transaction price is allocated across all the performance obligations agreed upon in the contract.
Step 5: Recognize revenue when the performance obligations are met
Revenue can only be recognized at a point in time when the customer enjoys the service and the customer expresses satisfaction with the service.
This rule describes that revenue earned from a single customer is distributed evenly by the signed contract between the SaaS Company and the customer.
If the service delivered to the customer remains the same throughout the full year, there will not be any modification in recognition of revenue.
For instance, if a customer enjoys the same service for a 12-month contract, your SaaS business can recognize 1/12th of the contract price as revenue each month as your customer also receives 1/12th of the service.
However, if the nature of service varies significantly throughout the contract, your SaaS business could not expect steady revenue. Eventually, that inconsistency also reflects in the proportion of revenue your business recognize each month.
To evaluate your business’s revenue in a specific period, you need to look at the revenue recognized from each customer each month. All this data will be readily available in your company’s revenue schedule.
With this schedule, you can adjust your allocations in case of any upgrade or downgrade in the company’s contract. As a result, you can minimize the chances of over or underestimation of future revenue.
For instance, if the customer no longer wants to pursue the contract, you can update the schedule and stop recognizing the revenue-generating from that contract each month.
Sometimes, you might have to refund the portion of the initial transaction recorded in the financial statement as deferred revenue that hasn’t been recognized yet.
Conversely, if a customer switches to a more advanced subscription plan, update the monthly revenue schedule with a higher price. Therefore, you’ll end up recognizing a higher revenue each month.
Key Metrics in SaaS Revenue Recognition
Before we delve deeper into details, here are some core concepts of SaaS revenue recognition:
Deferred Revenue
Deferred revenue is the amount you have billed your customer but cannot recognize that amount as revenue because the agreed service hasn’t yet been provided. From the accounting perspective, this revenue is referred to as unearned revenue.
Deferred revenue is perceived as a liability because if you fail to deliver the agreed service, your business will be liable to refund that money to the customer.
Unbilled Revenue
Unbilled revenue is the revenue a company has recognized but hasn’t yet billed the customer due to the billing schedule and milestones described in a contract. Unbilled revenue is recorded as a receivable asset till the company bills the customer.
Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) and Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR)
The most fascinating feature of SaaS business is its ability to generate recurring revenue. From ARR, a SaaS Company can gauge the revenue from an annual subscription. Whereas Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) is revenue converted into a monthly figure.
The following are the types of MRR:
New MRR: the revenue company generates when a customer purchases a subscription plan.
Expansion MRR: The additional revenue generated from an existing customer.
Contraction MRR: A noticeable decline in the SaaS Company revenue due to the customer’s cancellation of a subscription plan or downgrading from a top-tier plan to a basic one. Or due to the discount availed by the customers.
A firm understanding of these metrics is integral to a SaaS finance team’s responsibility.
Bookings
Booking is a forward-looking metric indicating a signed contract with the prospective customer for a particular timeframe. Simply speaking, bookings describe your customers’ commitment to pay you money for the service they are consuming.
In the case of a contract comprising many years, bookings with at least one year of committed revenue fall under the category of Annual Contract Value (ACV) bookings.
While ACV talks about annual contracts, Total Contract Values (TCV) are calculated by considering the contract’s complete duration. Furthermore, there are non-recurring bookings wherein customers should pay only one-time fees like setup fees, discounts, and training fees.
Booking is one of the key determinants of company revenue growth. It helps companies to track the growth of sales. Aside from sales, booking helps the finance team and CFOs manage the inflow and outflowing cash.
Moreover, it helps companies record bookings as committed revenue while maintaining a company’s books without recording them as revenue. Thus, it eliminates all kinds of inaccuracies when calculating ARR and MRR.
Billings
Billings are the invoices a customer is liable to pay for a certain period, for instance, a couple of months or a year.
A SaaS Company with a high booking but significantly lower billing will certainly experience a future cash flow problem. To ensure a healthy cash flow, a SaaS company should rethink ways to promote upfront payment from the customers and increase billings.
This goal can be easily achieved by offering customers substantial discounts on annual payments.
Revenue
is the money that a company earns when a customer consumes a service. A company could only recognize revenue for a month upon service delivery to a customer for the full month. This is by the GAAP rules that state that revenue can only be recognized when earned.
Mere relying on billing and booking to gauge a company’s financial performance simply means you are tracking inflated numbers. This approach could be devastating for the financial health of your company.
To cope with this problem, the more accurate way is to only keep an eye on the recognized revenue that indicates the company’s actual revenue by providing service.
So far, we have discussed the key SaaS metrics a finance team should know. From now on, we’ll explore how to calculate MRR, billings, and bookings.
Accrual Accounting Principles
In accrual accounting, revenues and expenses are only recorded when earned or incurred. Accrual accounting best suits the SaaS business because it relies on the subscription-based model. If a SaaS Company recognized the accrual revenue correctly, the company could track the MRR appropriately.
This method is better than cash base accounting, where businesses record revenue when cash comes in, and liabilities are paid. Despite its complex nature, growing SaaS companies widely use accrual accounting principles.
A SaaS company with more than $25 million in gross revenue should adopt accrual accounting principles to comply with IRS (Internal Revenue Service).
| Pros | Cons |
| Provides a more accurate representation of a company’s net profit at a given time | It requires intense bookkeeping and is a bit complex. |
| Helps with better forecasting of future revenue and expenses | Income is only recorded when a company earns it. So the company won’t pay taxes on the money it hasn’t earned. |
Why Should a Company Follow Accounting Standards?
The financial standards develop the rule and guidelines of financial accounting and reporting. Revenue Recognition is among the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles endorsed by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB).
Many countries follow its alternative under the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) enacted by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB).
The Growth of Accounting Standard Codification (ASC) 606
According to the statement issued by the Financial Accounting Standard Board, the revenue recognition requirement of IFRS lacks sufficient details and accounting standards of the US. For this reason, GAAP was deemed inappropriate in some areas.
To resolve these issues, FASB and IFRS coalesced to lay down the foundation of a new revenue recognition system called ASC 606 that only deals with revenue earned from the customer.
ASC 606 creates a robust framework for revenue recognition for many industries. This eliminates confusion around the SaaS due to inconsistent and inappropriate accounting practices.
Key Challenges in SaaS Revenue Recognition
Revenue recognition is straightforward and counterintuitive for a SaaS company that offers an annual subscription plan. But complexity arises due to a slight change in the subscription plan:
· Cancellation of a subscription in the middle
· Upgradation from the monthly to annual plan in the middle of the year.
· Downgrade from an enterprise plan ($25000/month) to a basic plan ($7500/month).
It becomes more complex with an introduction of new features that comes with SaaS:
· Setup fees
· Support fees
· Consultation fees
· Customization cost
· Consumption-driven cost
Depending on the performance obligations and ability of the company to deal with them, SaaS Companies have many revenue recognition methods to choose from. Some well-known revenue recognition methods are cost recovery and the completed contract methods.
In complex revenue scenarios, revenue needs to be recognized separately. Let’s explore each of the scenarios individually.
SaaS Companies Revenue Recognition Scenarios
Suppose that a SaaS Company provides an e-ticketing service to its customers. The company offers its users three subscription plans: basic plan, pro plan, and enterprise plan of $3000, $6000, and $12000. The company also provides the flexibility to its customers to add more users when required.
Revenue Recognition for an Annual Plan
A customer purchased an annual plan of $6000 monthly starting in January. In this scenario, recognizing revenue will be fairly simple.
The company billed the customer with an invoice of $6000 at the start of January. But as discussed earlier, only $500 will be recognized as revenue in January. Therein the real irony lies in how to record the revenue that is collected but hasn’t yet been recognized.
The accountant records the remaining $5500 as deferred revenue in this scenario.
Upon the completion of each month, another $500 will be recognized for the services delivered to the customers. This process continues till the end of December when the SaaS Company fully meets the customer’s obligations.
· The invoice created in January will be for $6000.
· Revenue recognized in January: $500
· Deferred revenue in January: $5500
· Revenue recognized on 31st December: $6000
· Deferred revenue in December: $0
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | |
| Revenue | 500 | 500 | 500 | 500 | 500 | 500 | 500 | 500 | 500 | 500 | 500 | 500 |
| Deferred revenue | 5500 | 500 | 4500 | 4000 | 3500 | 3000 | 2500 | 2000 | 1500 | 1000 | 500 | 0 |
Revenue Recognition for Upgrade in Subscription Plan
The customer decides to update from a pro to an enterprise plan, i.e., from $6000 to $12000, on 15th May. An accountant prepares an MRR plan for May that shows the MRR for May would be $1000.
From the revenue recognition standpoint that solely depends on the billing and the service customer consumed, it is how the sequence of events with regards to the revenue recognized in April would look like:
· Invoice raised in January: $6000
· Revenue recognized till 30th April: $2000
· Revenue recognized till 15th May: $250 (for 15 days of consumption of service)
· Total revenue recognized from 1st January to 15th May: $2250
· Credit note raised = $3750
· Net prorated invoice raised for $7500
· Net revenue recognized in May: $750 ($250 for the first 15 days of May and $500 for the remaining month of May)
· Deferred revenue at the end of May: $7000 (prorated invoice of $12000 was raised from the 15th of May to the 31st of December)
· Revenue recognized in the remaining months (from June to December): $1000/month.
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | |
| Revenue | 500 | 500 | 500 | 500 | 750 | 1000 | 1000 | 1000 | 1000 | 1000 | 1000 | 1000 |
| Deferred Revenue | 5500 | 5000 | 4500 | 4000 | 7000 | 6000 | 5000 | 4000 | 3000 | 2000 | 1000 | 0 |
Revenue Recognition for Quantity-Based Upgrade
If a customer wants 10 additional users in an existing pro plan on 1st May, at the cost of $10 per agent in the remaining months, then it falls under the category of quantity-based upgrade.
In this scenario, a new invoice will be raised for 10 agents.
· Invoice raised in January for $6000.
· Revenue recognized from January to April: $2000.
· Quantity-based upgrade from 100 to 110 agents on the 1st May charged at $10 per user
· Prorated invoice created in May for $4000.
· Revenue recognized in May and the remaining months: $600($500 + ($10*10 additional agents))
· Deferred revenue in May: $4200
· Deferred revenue in June: $3600
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | |
| Revenue | 500 | 500 | 500 | 500 | 600 | 600 | 600 | 600 | 600 | 600 | 600 | 600 |
| Deferred Revenue | 5500 | 5000 | 4500 | 4000 | 3600 | 3000 | 2500 | 2000 | 1500 | 1000 | 500 | 0 |
Revenue Recognition for Downgrade in Subscription Plan
If a customer decides to downgrade from an existing pro plan of $6000 to a basic plan of $3000 on 15th May. Here is how the revenue is recognized in this scenario.
Revenue recognized from 1st May to 15th May is $250. After downgrading the subscription plan, a credit note of $3750 will be raised, and revenue recognized from 15th May to 30th May will be $125.
· Invoice created in January for $6000.
· Revenue recognized from January to April: $2000.
· Revenue recognized from 1st May to 15th May: $250
· A credit note will be raised for $3750
· A new prorated invoice will be generated for $1875
· Net revenue earned in May: $375
· Revenue recognized in the remaining months from (June to December): $250/month
· Deferred revenue in May: $1750
· Deferred revenue in June: $1500
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | |
| Revenue | 500 | 500 | 500 | 500 | 375 | 250 | 250 | 250 | 250 | 250 | 250 | 250 |
| Deferred Revenue | 5500 | 5000 | 4500 | 4000 | 1750 | 1500 | 1250 | 1000 | 750 | 500 | 250 | 0 |
Revenue Recognition for Cancellation with Refunds
The customer subscribes to the annual contract of the SaaS Company that costs $6000 in January. However, the customer decided to cancel the contract in May.
The SaaS Company could experience two possible scenarios based on how the company would like to implement its contractual rights.
In case of cancellation followed by a refund claim, the customer cancels their subscription at the start of May and claims a refund. The SaaS Company recognized revenue till the end of April.
To substantiate the cancellation of the subscription plan, the company raised a credit note of $4000.
| January | February | March | April | May | |
| Revenue | 500 | 500 | 500 | 500 | 0 |
| Deferred revenue | 5500 | 5000 | 4500 | 4000 | 0 |
Revenue Recognition for Cancellation with Refunds
In case of cancellations with refunds, the customer cancels their subscription at the start of May. However, they are not entitled to receive partial or full refunds.
In this scenario, the balance deferred amount will be treated as revenue, and no credit note will be created.
| January | February | March | April | May | |
| Revenue | 500 | 500 | 500 | 500 | 500 |
| Deferred revenue | 5500 | 5000 | 4500 | 4000 | 0 |
Conclusion
Developing a great product that addresses your targeted customer needs is imperative for the success of a SaaS business. However, recognizing revenue correctly is equally important to retain the commercial viability of SaaS products. If you fail in this step, your ability to make future financial gets affected.
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