Sage for SaaS and Technology: enjoy frictionless growth

For startups, growth is almost always seen in a positive light.

After all, it’s what brings in recurring revenue and keeps investors happy.

However, SaaS CFOs need to take a more nuanced view of startup growth. If you don’t set your company up for frictionless growth across its entire lifecycle, you’ll start to encounter logistical problems and growing pains as your accounting software strains under increasing transaction loads.

This makes it difficult to scale smoothly and can even jeopardize your funding rounds.

Sage’s new software bundle, Sage for SaaS and Technology, is opening the doors to seamless growth throughout the startup lifecycle.

In this post, we explore how Sage for SaaS and Technology eliminates startup growing pains with frictionless finance automation and business intelligence to scale through IPO.

Here’s what we’ll cover

Why is frictionless growth vital for SaaS startups?

As a SaaS CFO, you’re responsible for ensuring that your startup’s accounting systems and workflows can keep pace with the demands of rapid growth.

Growth puts pressure on your accounting software, little by little, until something finally goes wrong and you start having problems.

It might start with something simple, like financial reports coming in a bit late.

Or maybe inaccuracies begin showing up in your data because you’ve let silos become the company norm.

Those problems will compound and continue to escalate until they interfere with your startup’s growth trajectory, and the issues become more severe:

• Funding rounds go south because you don’t have the metrics investors need to see at your growth stage.
• Data silos make it difficult for teams to align on strategic initiatives, leading to missed revenue opportunities.
• Your revenue recognition processes start to fail under the strain of growth, introducing compliance risks.
• Eventually, you have to upgrade your software altogether, distracting you from crucial goals and slowing your startup’s growth.

Without a doubt, startup growth is something you should pursue aggressively as a CFO.

But if you don’t stop to ask how you’re going to scale smoothly, your SaaS company can count on growing pains along the way.

How does Sage for SaaS and Technology enable frictionless growth?

Sage for SaaS and Technology was built with startups in mind, and SaaS CFOs in particular.

You need to be nimble to win your market, and you can’t afford to slow down every 12 to 24 months to upgrade your accounting software as your company grows.

Sage for SaaS and Technology has everything SaaS companies need to scale through IPO and beyond while avoiding traditional startup growth pains.

Dismantle data silos with a single source of truth

As your startup scales, the amount of customer and financial data you work with scales alongside it.

Without a centralized data source, known as a single source of truth (SSOT), departments inevitably become silos.

With each team updating its own data, departments begin to lose touch with one another.

When that happens, it’s difficult for startups to strategize effectively, supply accurate metrics to investors, and operate competitively in their market.

Data silos also leave startups vulnerable to data breaches and other cyber risks.

Sage for SaaS and Technology gives finance leaders a centralized SSOT for all their company’s financial data:

• Real-time SaaS metrics and KPIs
• Automated revenue recognition
• Investor capitalization tables
• Connect your accounting suite to Salesforce
• Seamlessly connect to Sage’s 350+ integration partners

With real-time business intelligence from an SSOT, you never have to waste time assembling and updating data.

Stakeholders can strategize in unison, helping your business scale smoothly across its lifecycle to IPO and beyond.

Secure venture capital funding with real-time investor metrics

As your startup matures, your funding objectives will change.

At each stage of a startup’s growth journey, investors need to evaluate very specific KPIs to justify further funding:

• Early stage: For startups, this phase encompasses your pre-seed, seed, and Series A funding rounds. Investors will be looking for high customer lifetime value (CLTV), strong cash flow, and a low customer acquisition cost (CAC).  

• Growth stage: This stage consists of your Series B and Series C funding rounds. Before committing more capital, investors will need to see that your revenue model is working effectively. That means strong upselling and cross-selling trends, steady renewals, low customer and revenue churn rates, and high net dollar retention (NDR).
• Late stage, pre-IPO: Late stage startups sometimes pursue additional funding rounds as they approach an IPO. Anything after your Series C round would fall into this category. Before funding late-stage SaaS startups, investors want proof of a predictable and repeatable business model that’s generating high profits and has an attractive gross margin.

Sage for SaaS and Technology equips finance leaders with role-based KPI dashboards fueled by AI, so you’re always prepared to weave a compelling financial narrative for investors.

The software bundle features 200+ real-time investor KPIs to help you sail through your funding rounds, whether you’re seeking pre-seed funding or approaching an IPO.

Handle complex revenue recognition scenarios at the press of a button

Revenue recognition gets extremely complex and time-consuming as you scale, to the point where it feels like a full-time job in and of itself.

Over time, this siphons valuable resources away from other areas of your startup and presents an obstacle to further growth.

It also exposes your business to the risk of significant non-compliance fees and revenue leakage and can even interfere with your IPO eligibility.

With Sage for SaaS and Technology, software companies can recognize revenue for 10,000 customers as easily as they can for 10.

Sage’s software bundle for startups gives CFOs access to:

• Real-time revenue recognition with a single click

• Deferred revenue waterfalls
• Automated ASC 606 and IFRS 15 compliance

Revenue recognition isn’t the only thing startups need to worry about when it comes to compliance.

Sage for Technology also automates SOX compliance, including Section 302 pertaining to corporate governance.

Speed up time-to-value with Sage’s guided deployment process

On top of providing tech startups with best-in-class accounting AI across the entire business lifecycle, Sage for SaaS and Technology includes a useful guided implementation.

Built on best practices that Sage has refined over several decades and thousands of software implementations, this streamlined deployment process enables companies to keep charging toward IPO without a pause.

Sage’s new software bundle for startups is built for deployment at speed.

Frictionless finance automation and intelligence to grow through IPO 

Whether you’re embarking on your pre-seed funding round or laying the groundwork for an IPO, you need to prioritize frictionless growth.

Sage for SaaS and Technology sets companies up for smooth sailing and painless scaling no matter what stage of the journey they’re at.

To learn more, click here