B2B / SaaS
Model B2B revenue the way it actually behaves: per-customer contracts, ACV, churn, and expansion, driven by a sales-led and marketing-led funnel rather than a growth percentage.
Contracts, ACV, churn
The problem
Most B2B models start with last month's revenue and a growth percentage. That number is a guess dressed up as a plan, and it cannot answer the only questions that matter. Does the pipeline support next quarter. What happens to the run rate if churn moves a point. Whether the two account executives you are about to hire pay for themselves, and when.
What a SaaS template gets wrong
A revenue line that grows by a fixed percentage hides the two things that decide a B2B outcome: how many customers you actually win, and how many you keep. Both are the direct result of decisions you control, and neither shows up in a growth rate.
The drivers
How YourCFO models it
Sales-led and marketing-led motions run side by side, each with its own spend, conversion, and cycle length. Paid and content channels feed the same pipeline without being averaged into one blended number.
Revenue is the customer base multiplied by contract value, so subscription, usage-based, and service-fee streams can sit in the same forecast and still behave differently.
Customers who leave stop paying from the month they churn, and the base you keep is what expansion compounds on. Retention is a driver, not a footnote.
A hire, a campaign, or a pricing change is layered as an initiative tied to the specific driver it moves, then checked against actuals through variance.
you hire two account executives in March
payroll rises in March, pipeline rises at their ramp, and the won customers and revenue land two to three months after that.
The numbers that matter
What an average customer is worth, and how that shifts as you move upmarket or add tiers.
How much of the base you keep, and whether expansion covers what churn takes out.
What a won customer costs across each motion, and how many months of contract value it takes to earn it back.
What the hiring and spend behind the plan do to cash, month by month.
The chart of accounts seeds subscription and service revenue lines, hosting and support cost of sales, and departmental operating expenses, so gross margin is real rather than a plug.
Common questions
Other models
Cohorts, ARPU, retention
Consumer subscriptions do not churn at a flat rate. Model acquisition cohorts against a retention curve, with revenue as active users times ARPU, so month one drop-off and the long tail are both visible.
Units, price, landed COGS
If you sell physical units, margin is made or lost after the sale. Model buyer cohorts, repeat purchase, and a channel margin waterfall across D2C, marketplace, and wholesale, on landed cost rather than list price.
Order book, capacity, yield
Demand you cannot produce is not revenue. Model an order book against real production capacity from machines, shifts, and yield, with output clamped to whichever is lower and unit cost moving with utilization.
Set up the model that matches your business, then watch what your next decision does to the bottom line.