SaaS businesses often have high gross margins because the costs of providing their software are largely fixed and do not increase significantly as the number of customers grows. This is in contrast to businesses that sell physical products, where the cost of goods sold (COGS) typically increases as the number of units sold increases.
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SaaS / Recurring Revenue Forecasting Templates Bundle
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All the SaaS startup forecasting spreadsheets / templates will be immediately available for download after purchase. All of these models will have CaC, CaC payback, and LTV metric calculations.
Subscription Forecasting Templates:
B2B SaaS ($175)
The main difference in this model compared to the other SaaS builds is having a varying contract term for each customer tier (in months) and the ability to define expansion revenue accurately. The dynamic nature of revenue forecasting in relation to dealing with enterprise clients is second to none here.
Freemium ($45)
Here is a bit of a different direction. You still have users coming in from a traffic source, but now there is specific logic to convert that traffic from free to a paid service in exchange for no ads or users can pay to unlock more features. This one has clean logic for investor distributions as well.
This is one of the more rare business types but still offers some interesting dynamics. It involves the business of having a platform where people or businesses can offer loans to other people and businesses (often called p2p lending). This shows the way a platform can make money by connecting the two via closing fees and a % of the interest revenue. You can plan on a wide range of loan types on the platform and derive all kinds of interesting things from the assumptions included.
The initial cost to acquire a customer is the roots and the lifetime value is the branches. This model is more geared toward any business that has subscribers and some cost to acquire them. It is not a full model but rather focuses in on those metrics and the inputs required to see the most important aspects of a SaaS business.
Marketplace ($45)
This is not exactly a 'SaaS' business per se but it does involve getting users to use your platform. The model is focused on fee revenue that you earn by facilitating buyers/sellers to come together. There are advanced fee structures in the assumptions and I think this is really useful for any business looking to create a place for buyers and sellers to come together and transact anything.
Marketplace + Subscription ($175)
Adding a subscription service to your marketplace business can provide several benefits. This financial model makes it easy to configure all relevant inputs for the growth of your marketplace, growth of subscribers, and the resulting revenues of each based on bottom-up logic. The subscribers and marketplace users have best-in-practice retention logic utilized and there is upselling assumptions for the percentage of non-subscriber marketplace customers moving to subscribers. Additionally, all the inputs are on a monthly basis for marketplace traffic / conversions / transaction values / fees / and transaction activity.
This is dedicated to just starting a mobile app and nothing else. There are three revenue streams here and it is all focused on logic that pertains to this specific business model. Focus here is on user retention (most accurate and advanced methodology used).
5 Tier SaaS model driven by traffic and conversions. The logic for revenue and expenses is more sophisticated with key assumption configuration sensitivity via 'low/base/high' toggle. Includes advanced distribution summaries for potential investor financing as well as the option for freemium.
I talked to a few operators in order to understand how the fee structures and revenue work. This model gives you all the financial forecasting logic required for private golf course startup planning.
Product + Subscription ($75)
This financial model offers assistance with pricing strategy and cash flow planning. It involves turning the sales of products into a subscription service that runs on top of the product. The logic for manufacturing/sales/subscribers/expenses is the most advanced from all the things I have done as of yet. You will see some really interesting CaC, LTV, and LTV to CaC results as you play with all the assumptions and timing of things.
The business logic in this recurring revenue model has a module for product deployment and selling access to the product by way of a monthly subscription rather than selling the product outright. There are really cool capacity assumptions and useful input configuration across all aspects of the template. Best-in-practice retention logic is used as well.
Here you can model out the startup or continuance of a CPA or Law firm as it relates to financial projections, billable hours, and headcounts. This also works great for any kind of consultancy business where there are multiple consultants working under a single brand name. The revenue logic here is super unique and allows for more strategic planning that is more precise than you might see in a typical template.
This is what happens when you mix real estate with SaaS. The software part of a property management company is the system that collects rent for property owners and the real estate part is that the fees earned are based on rent collected from tenants (usually). This model lets the user configure customer acquisition, tenant / unit sizes, average monthly rent per tenant, % fee, and retention rates. There are also options for other revenue sources and variable costs per customer per month.
Ratio Driven SaaS ($125)
This is a startup 5-year financial forecasting model that scales based on headcount ratios. The model starts with the number of SDRs hired per month. Then, the user can define the number of Account Executives (AE) to exist per 1 SDR over time and the quota of deals an AE is planned to close per month as well as the % of quota attainment a given AE achieves in their first 12 months (in 3-month increments). Customer Service reps drive off the number of active users and new users added per month. There are two engineering position types and their headcount runs off a % of revenue.
Rolling Revenue Forecast ($45)
Great for creating up to a 60-month revenue forecast for SaaS companies based on existing customer retention rates and new customers added. I know finance and accounting teams struggle with this and for good reason. It is hard to do smoothly and accurately when you have to take into account all relevant revenue factors.
SaaS Pricing Simulator ($45)
Adjust up to 10 customer configurations to see what is feasible and possible. This simulation is really important to understand for any SaaS startup or on-going operation that wants to tighten up their pricing or test new pricing strategies out and compare the resulting customer lifetime flows.
Another 'product-service system', the big addition in this model was including expansion MRR and negative churn. Those are some of the most important metrics for any recurring revenue services business. This also includes all the standard calculations of MRR, CaC, LTV, and LTV to CaC. It has over 20 visuals as well.
Standard SaaS ($45)
This startup model was the first build I ever did and it has been one of the most popular. You can adjust assumptions for user growth, churn, expected costs, and potentially having a one-time setup fee. This is the more simplistic version compared to the ones that follow, but because of that simplicity, many have found it useful.
Similar Templates Also Included:
Ad Network ($45)
This is not exactly a 'SaaS' business, but it kind of is because as a network that facilitates/connects buyers and sellers of ads, the way revenue is created is based on the on-going activity of participants that interact with the network. The software that facilitates this makes it fairly close to being in a 'SaaS' category.
Build a financial forecast based on expected one-time washes plus washes from members over a 5 year period. Includes forecasted financial statements, pro forma detail, visualizations, and more.
The 'as-a-service' recurring revenue business model can be a great strategy for maximizing profits and getting the most out of your software services. The following Excel spreadsheets are all based on this notion of recurring revenue from subscribers/customers.
You can upload all these Excel templates to Google Sheets if desired.
All startup spreadsheets include integrated 3 statement model logic for monthly and annual financial statement forecasting (Income Statement, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow Statement)
More About the Software-as-a-Service Industry
There are a few key factors that can contribute to the high gross margins of SaaS businesses:
Economies of scale: As a SaaS business grows and adds more customers, the fixed costs of development and maintenance are spread out over a larger base of revenue, which can lead to lower unit costs and higher margins.
Recurring revenue: SaaS businesses typically generate revenue on a recurring basis, as customers pay a subscription fee to access the software. This can provide a stable and predictable source of income, which can be attractive to investors and contribute to the valuation of the company.
High customer lifetime value: SaaS businesses often have high customer lifetime value (CLV), which is the total amount of money that a customer is expected to spend on the company's products or services over the course of their relationship with the company. A high CLV can contribute to the overall profitability of the business and help drive up valuations.
Overall, the combination of fixed costs, recurring revenue, and high CLV can contribute to the high gross margins of SaaS businesses and drive up their valuations.
You can buy all financial model templates and tools from smarthelping.com in one large bundle here: https://www.smarthelping.com/p/excel.html
