Revenue recognition done right
ASC 606-aligned revenue recognition and deferred revenue schedules that hold up under diligence.
Accounting for SaaS Startups
Accounting for early stage SaaS startup, before you hire a finance team
Once you sell an annual plan, cash in the bank isn’t revenue. Some of it is service you still owe the customer. Early-stage SaaS accounting is that split, plus a runway figure you can repeat without opening a spreadsheet. You don’t need a CFO to get there. A month-end close posts deferred revenue every month. Cash reporting is where the runway number comes from.
Deferred revenue
Posted with the close
Runway
From closed months
Monthly
Reviewed close
What does early-stage SaaS accounting actually need?
Bill annually and the cash hits in one month. Revenue shouldn’t. The unearned portion sits on the balance sheet as deferred revenue and comes off as you deliver each month. Skip that entry and January’s profit is mostly cash you haven’t earned yet. February, with no new prepay, looks like revenue disappeared. Neither month was the business.
Pre-revenue companies, and teams on monthly plans with no annual prepay, can ignore deferred revenue for now. Runway still matters. Take the cash you have and the burn from the last few closed months. Divide. That’s the figure a co-founder asks for long before an investor does.
OnNumbers keeps the books and the close. We don’t run the fundraise. Cutting spend is your call. When a board pack or a diligence list shows up, you can hand the file over. Nobody has to rebuild the year. Until then, the same close is how you know the runway.
What gets in the way
The problems we see most
- ✕Annual prepay hits the bank and gets booked as that month’s revenue.
- ✕Runway lives in a spreadsheet last updated before the latest hires.
- ✕Deferred revenue is a plug, or it isn’t on the balance sheet at all.
- ✕Someone asks how the number was built, and there’s no close to point at.
How OnNumbers helps
What changes when you work with us
Runway you can trust
Cash and burn taken from the last closed months, so the runway you quote is one an accountant has already reviewed.
Board-ready reporting
Clean, consistent reporting packages produced on a predictable cadence, so board week stops being a fire drill.
Diligence without panic
Documented, reviewable books, with dedicated data-room and diligence support.
Every plan includes the full platform and core bookkeeping. See exactly what’s included at each plan →
The OnNumbers platform
What changes when the work is visible
The same software your accountants work in is the software you watch. Below is what each part of it actually does for your week, with the capability behind it named underneath.
Live work trackingActive now
- M60%
Mary
Reconciling bank accounts
- JCompleted
John
Reviewing AP
- SOn you
Sarah
Waiting for client invoice
See the work, not just the result.
Log in and watch your accounting team work in real time: who is on what, how far along they are, and what is waiting on you. The end-of-month report stops being a surprise, because you have followed every step to get there.
Month-end stops being a surprise. You can see the close is on track before it’s late, instead of chasing somebody for a status update.
Follow month-end step by step, with a live progress bar covering bank recon, AP, AR, accruals, and sales tax.
Financial Close
Problems surface the day they appear rather than six weeks later, while they’re still cheap to fix.
Structured daily analysis of revenue, cash, runway, and anomalies. You see it the same day, well before month-end.
AI Pulse
Nobody rebuilds the same spreadsheet every month, and you know which numbers moved without having to ask anyone.
Live KPI and KRA dashboards and scorecards, so you can track performance without rebuilding spreadsheets.
KPI Engine
You know today whether your books can be trusted, rather than finding out halfway through a diligence process.
An AI-maintained account health score with open problems and prioritized recommendations.
Review Account
A board or lender request takes minutes. You’re not assembling a deck the night before the meeting.
P&L, balance sheet, cash flow, and trial balance with branded PDF and Excel export.
Reporting Engine
Runway becomes a number you can act on, instead of a spreadsheet cell somebody last touched two months ago.
Budget vs. actual and rolling forecasts tied to your books, so runway decisions use current numbers.
Budget & Forecast
You get the answer without commissioning a report and waiting a week to read it.
AI-powered insight packs for AR, AP, revenue, expenses, and cash. Answers without building reports.
AI Financial Insights
A finance question takes about thirty seconds, rather than three days of email with your bookkeeper.
Ask questions in natural language. AI returns charts, tables, and answers grounded in your data.
Ask AI
You stop paying the same invoice twice. Duplicate payments and unusual vendor activity get flagged the day they land, well before a year-end review would find them.
AI-powered checks for duplicate payments, unusual vendor activity, and risk, surfaced early.
Vendor Compliance
You can see what you actually spend and with whom, instead of four spellings of the same vendor scattered across the ledger.
AI-assisted vendor dedup, enrichment, and risk scoring, with spend visibility and ledger write-back.
Vendor Expense Management
Miscoded and out-of-policy spend gets caught as it lands, so year-end is a close rather than a cleanup project. Every line carries a control on it, and an audit trail behind it.
AI classification suggestions, policy rules, risk scoring, and approvals on GL transactions.
Transaction Assurance
You can answer “how are we doing” on any day of the month, without waiting for the next scheduled report.
On-demand AI-written read of your financial position, key trends, and what to watch. Run it when you need it.
AI Assessment
Essentials, Growth, and Enterprise include every capability above, at no additional cost. See how the platform works →
Ready to see your SaaS startup’s numbers clearly?
Show us your current setup and we’ll map out what real visibility would look like for a firm like yours.