Jason M. LemkinCEO, SaaStr · Co-Founder of SaaStr AI, SaaStr Fund, Adobe Sign

The Importance of Hiring an Accountant with Recurring Revenue Experience

29 Mar 2024 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:49

Short conversational video (Jason M. Lemkin with another speaker) advising startups to hire an accountant or controller with recurring-revenue experience. Key points: hire at least a part-time controller who understands renewals and recurring revenue models; common founder mistake is focusing on bookings (e.g., "$100k in deals") without tracking collections, often collecting only ~80%; this can lead to paying sales commissions prematurely and cash shortfalls.

Questions this video answers

March 29, 2024

$100k in deals

About 80%

And if nothing else, find an accountant.
A controller.
Even a part time controller. Here's what you have to do. They have to have.
Recurring revenue experience.
If you hire.
An accountant or someone from some firm off Craigslist or off the Internet, or someone that your friends.
Use, but.
They do clothing stores or they do not hardware manufacturing, but they don't do recurring revenue, they won't understand how the numbers work. They'll get it wrong. Got it. Right.
How did the renewals.
Flow into your model? Right.
What percent of my revenue should by collecting. I see this. You know what I see happen all the time. I'll give you one last thing. This is a tragedy that happens with.
Founders when they raise money.
I ask them, okay, how much did.
You book this month? We booked 100k in new revenue.
Whoa, that's awesome.
100K in deals, right?
How much did you collect?
I don't know. Bad idea.
It's usually like 80%. They don't get.
Good financial help and.
They'Re booked closing these contracts, patting themselves on their back, paying out the sales.
Reps, and.
They'Re not even collecting the revenue they get because they don't have the DNA.