Reporting and Analytics Support

In addition to the automatic billing and invoicing, JustOn provides flexible reporting and analytics features.

Metric Objects

Service companies (SaaS, professional services, etc.) usually generate recurring revenue based on subscriptions with their customers. JustOn supports subscription billing with recurring and transactional (usage-based) items. Now the companies need continuous reporting about subscription-based KPIs, too - like, for example, MRR (monthly recurring revenue) or Churn (rate of discontinued subscriptions or lost revenue).

Take, for example, companies that provide SaaS services. In order to run their business and to get a complete overview of their financial data, they usually distinguish between bookings, billings and revenues:

• Bookings provide a view on the growth of the business. You can analyze the past and near future using the reports based on actual bookings. Basically, they reflect how well a business model scales and how well the sales team performs. Common KPIs include MRR (monthly recurring revenue, based on subscriptions) and Churn (rate of discontinued subscriptions or lost revenue). Taking this one step forward: Actual subscriptions allow for forecasting the future cash position.
• Billings indicate the amount of money that has been invoiced and that is to be collected from customers. They provide information about the cash that a business can expect in the near future. Common KPIs include ARPA (average revenue per account) and CLTV (customer lifetime value). Additional reports may inform about the invoiced amount by product group, the total invoiced amount by account or the amount of tax to pay.

• Revenues represent a view on the financial situation of the company. JustOn revenue reports are based on bookkeeping data for invoices, which provide information about

  • the revenue that can be recognized in a certain booking period, like a yearly invoice split into monthly revenue amounts - it can show the billed and recognizable revenue as opposed to the deferred revenue
  • the revenue that is not yet billed but can be forecasted based on the existing bookings, providing a view on the future financial data - this is the amount that is not billed yet but booked, that is, the forecasted revenue by booking periods.

Now adding the dimension time to bookings, billings and revenues results in the following SaaS reporting scheme:

SaaS KPI reporting with JustOn

For analytics and reporting purposes, JustOn introduces specific metric objects that can be set up to track and display invoicing-relevant changes. The metric records can give valuable insights into your business by displaying the recurring revenue for the current or a future date, recurring changes (like growth or churn), or expected cash flow on a monthly basis. In addition, you can use the metric records in order customize the JustOn reports or to build your own reports in Salesforce.

• Subscription metrics
• Cash metrics

Subscription Metrics

Subscription metrics track changes to recurring or transactional items, like creation, termination, price/quantity modifications, to display the recurring revenue or growth/churn rates. Subscription metrics are related to the account and the subscription.

Subscription metric data model

Field	Description
Account	The related account (secondary master-detail); the metric record is deleted when the account is deleted.
Actual	The actual amount of this metric Previous/Initial + Change
Change	The change of the MRR based on the previous MRR.
Churn Rate (Gross)	The gross churn rate is the ratio between Churn and Actual. IF(Actual=0,1,Churn/Actual)
Churn Rate (Net)	The net churn rate is the ratio between Change and Actual. IF(Actual=0,1,Change/Actual)
Churn	The absolute churn if the change is negative. IF(Change < 0,ABS(Change),null)
Date	The effective date of this metric, depends on the kind of change (add/subtract) and the service period/next invoice date of the item.
Expansion	The absolute expansion if the change is positive. IF(Change > 0,Change,null)
Growth Rate	The growth rate is the ratio between Change and Previous. IF(Previous=0,null,Change/Previous)
Initial	Holds the initial MRR value. Only filled if the change date equals the start date of the first subscription.
Is Latest (checkbox)	Marks the latest metric record for a particular item criterion.
Item Criterion	The criterion shows which items have been aggregated to this metric.
Items	The names of the related items that caused the current change.
Next Metric	Links to the next metric record, which supersedes the current record.
Previous Metric	Links to the previous metric record, which is superseded by the current record.
Previous	Holds the MRR value of the previous metric record.
Retention Rate	The opposite of the gross churn rate. The sum of the two is always 100%. 1-ChurnRateGross
Smooth Change	The smooth change formula allows to report two consecutive metrics (within two days) as one (like -50 and +70 is reported as +20)
Subscription	The related subscription (primary master-detail); the metric record is deleted when the subscription is deleted.

Subscription Metric Generation

Generally, the following item actions produce new or changed subscription metric records:

• Creating a recurring item
• Creating a transactional item with expected revenue

• Ending a subscription or item using an end date

  You can set the end date retroactively within one month to trigger the end metric creation.

• Deactivating an item

• Changing the price/quantity of an item

Workflow details

Subscription metric records are created on subscription or item change if the following conditions are met:

• Subscription

  • Status is set to Inactive, Canceled or Upgraded

• Recurring item

  • Billing type is Recurring or Recurring Prorated
  • Item is created
  • Quantity or price is changed
  • Item is deactivated
  • End date is set

• Transactional item

  • Billing type is not Recurring, Recurring Prorated or One-Time
  • Item is created
  • Expected revenue is changed
  • Item is deactivated
  • End date is set

In addition, the following rules apply:

• Each change results in a new metric record that is linked to the previous record.
• If the change date equals the start date of the first subscription, the field Initial is set.
• Subsequent metric records have filled the fields Previous and Change.
• The first record is set to the start date of the item or subscription.
• Subsequent metric records are set to the next invoice date of the item.
• A final metric record for an item is created only if the end date of the item actually reached (that is, if the end date equals the current date or a previous date), or if the subscription is canceled.
• The final metric record is set to the end date of the item.
• Metrics are continued from upgraded subscriptions (related via the subscription field Previous Subscription).

Subscription metrics generation example

The following example illustrates the subscription metric generation on a basic level, that is, without applying criteria. This produces a single metric chain.

There is a subscription with the start date set to 2019-01-01 and the following items:

Start and end dates trigger subscription metric record creation

Based on the given subscription items, the subscription metric builder job produces these metric records:

Produced subscription metric records

#	Event	Modification
1	REC1 start date	50,00 initial MRR value 50,00 actual amount
2	REC2 start date	270,00 (positive) change 270,00 expansion value 320,00 actual amount
3	REC3 start date	30,00 (positive) change 30,00 expansion value 350,00 actual amount
4	REC2 end date	-270,00 (negative) change 270,00 churn value 80,00 actual amount
5	REC1 end date	-50,00 (negative) change 50,00 churn value 30,00 actual amount

If there are end dates set for items, JustOn produces the corresponding end metrics.

Now assume you cancel the subscription before an item end date is reached. This forces JustOn to generate one end metric record for the current metric chain that includes all items, irrespective of their end date settings.

Produced subscription metric records after cancelling the subscription

#	Event	Modification
1	REC1 start date	50,00 initial MRR value 50,00 actual amount
2	REC2 start date	270,00 (positive) change 270,00 expansion value 320,00 actual amount
3	REC3 start date	30,00 (positive) change 30,00 expansion value 350,00 actual amount
4	subscription end date	-350,00 (negative) change 350,00 churn value 0,00 actual amount

Subscription Metric Chains

By default, JustOn aggregates the items of a subscription to one metric chain, where the metric records have a predecessor and a successor. Optionally, the subscription metric records can be grouped by an item criterion, for example, the product group. The resulting metrics are organized in metric chains per criterion. This allows you to build reports that reflect changes that result in growth or churn based on a specific criterion.

Applying an item criterion, JustOn produces metric chains per criterion

Metric Fields on Subscriptions

The subscription includes the field Initial MRR. It shows the sum of the initial MRR values of active recurring items at the subscription start.

You can define additional fields on the subscription that summarize subscription metric data. Use this to calculate the current or future MRR values, like Current MRR or MRR in One Year.

Example metrics-related fields on subscriptions

Field	Purpose
Last MRR Update	Shows the date on which the MRR fields were last calculated.
Current MRR	Shows the current MRR over all recurring items.
MRR in One Year	Shows the MRR in one year, based on the last MRR update.

The MRR fields are set up individually for your org by an administrator. Be aware that the field labels as well as the count/month configuration may vary.

Subscription Metrics

Cash Metrics

Cash metrics track subscription amount changes in order to display a business's cash flow. Cash metrics are related to the account and the subscription.

Cash metric data model

Field	Description
Subscription	The related subscription (primary master-detail); the metric record is deleted when the subscription is deleted.
Account	The related account (secondary master-detail); the metric record is deleted when the account is deleted.
Date	The effective date of this metric (month and year, always first day of a month)
Amount	The sum over all items of this month for the subscription
Month	The month of the effective date
Year	The year of the effective date

Depending on your process configuration, JustOn creates and updates cash metric records on subscription or item change. The conditions that trigger cash metric updates may include

• Modified start/end date or activation status for subscriptions
• Modified start/end date, activation status, billing period or modified quantity, price or discount values for items

One cash metric record corresponds to a monthly invoice run for a subscription. That is, JustOn "simulates" an invoice run per month and aggregates the amount of the resulting invoice line items for each subscription in the Amount field of the cash metric record.

Workflow details

If set up accordingly, JustOn creates and updates cash metric records on subscription or item change. The following conditions apply:

• One cash metric record corresponds to a monthly invoice run for a subscription. That is, JustOn "simulates" an invoice run per month and aggregates the amount of the resulting invoice line items for each subscription in the Amount field of the cash metric record.
• With respect to transactional items, the monthly amount of transactional items is derived from the Expected Revenue field of the item record (ONB2__ExpectedRevenue__c).
• JustOn creates cash metrics up to the end of the subscription or item. If there is no end date, cash metric records are produced for a maximum of 12 months.

Cash Metrics

Business Reports

Businesses need continuous reporting about their KPIs. To meet such requirements, Salesforce includes a reporting functionality. Using reports, you can examine your data in almost infinite combinations, display it in easy-to-understand formats, and share the resulting insights with others. For details, see Reports in the Salesforce Help.

JustOn makes use of Salesforce's reporting feature, providing a number of reports based on your org's invoicing-relevant data. You can select and add these reports to your Salesforce org.

Business Reports