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Unearned Revenue: What it is and What it Means for Subscription Businesses

Stax

The concept of unearned revenue can easily trip up SaaS companies that offer subscription services and products on a recurring basis. Unlike when selling ordinary products, you cannot recognize the revenue earned from a subscription all at once. So, what differentiates ‘earned’ versus ‘unearned revenue’? Advance rent payments.

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Understanding Deferred Revenue and Its Impact on Your SaaS Business

Subscription Flow

Deferred revenue refers to the income that you have collected, but not yet earned. The GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) issued by the FASB (Financial Accounting Standards Board), inform businesses when their revenue should be recognized. This is where the concept of deferred revenue comes in.

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What Is Working Capital?

Baremetrics

Accounts Receivable: This particular journal is only used under the accrual accounting system and not the cash accounting system. Accounts receivable includes the revenue that your company has recognized but not yet collected. For a SaaS business, the deferred revenue category is particularly important.

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Are You Counting Payments as Renewals?

Kellblog

Enterprise SaaS has drifted to a model where many, if not most, companies do multi-year contracts on annual payment terms. Buyers typically perform a thorough evaluation process before purchasing and are quite sure that the software will meet their needs when they deploy. How did we get here? Let’s consider an example.

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The top 5 subscription payment services: how to choose the best

ProfitWell

Scheduled payments, aka recurring billing. Scheduled payments have become a core form of revenue collection. Of course, recurring payments vary depending on the business. As the subscription universe continues to expand, you can expect to see even more subscription payment plans. What are subscription payments?

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The SaaS Financial Model You’ll Actually Update (Updated 2019)

Baremetrics

This model allowed me to work with dozens of SaaS startups using spreadsheets, while we built our financial modeling software Flightpath. These are exports from your accounting, billing and other systems to bring in actual data to use in your models. You can also enter these manually, or use an export from your billing system.

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What Is Unearned Revenue and How to Account for It

Baremetrics

You can often find yourself receiving money long before you provide agreed upon services or, conversely, providing services and then waiting for payment. This puts you in the position of having “unearned revenue”. Sign up for the Baremetrics free trial , and start monitoring your subscription revenue accurately and easily.