Setting up a Files Template

How to power SaaSGrid with Excel or Google Sheets.

Users can use familiar tools like Excel and Google Sheets to upload data into SaaSGrid. This article walks through selecting, creating, setting up, and updating a spreadsheet file in SaaSGrid.

1. Creating a Spreadsheet Template
2. Choosing a Template
3. MRR Waterfall Template
4. Transaction Revenue Template
5. Uploading your Template
6. Updating your Template
7. Limitations

Creating a Spreadsheet Template

If you're creating a workspace for the first time, select the Excel or Sheets options.

If you're adding a new spreadsheet, navigate to the Workspace Data tab, then select "+ Add Data Source" in the top right corner to add a Excel or Google Sheets data source.

Select "Create New" on the selection, and set your date range and create the spreadsheet. Don't worry about the data formatting yet - you can create additional columns to add future months and fill in data with a spreadsheet formula.

Choosing a Template

SaaSGrid offers multiple templates to fit your business needs. Navigate to the right template for a complete walkthrough of your template.

1. MRR Waterfall Template: Track revenue per month per customer and get access to customer-level attributes. Useful for SaaS businesses to track monthly revenue changes.
2. Transaction Revenue Template: Track every transaction and get access to transaction-level attributes. Useful for usage/activity businesses with variable billing data. Only available on paid plans.

Note that both templates cannot be used together - SaaSGrid will only accept one source for revenue.

MRR Waterfall Template

SaasGrid's MRR Waterfall template comes pre-formatted with a few sections - see below for a description of what to enter into each tab.

You can fill out the templates directly, or add additional tabs to the template (e.g. a P&L or Salesforce export), and write formulas to the Customer Revenue and Expenses tabs. While other sheets can have formulas or mappings for your data, SaaSGrid only reads the data on the four default tabs. Please don't change the names of the default tabs!

Customer Revenue

On the tab "Customer Revenue", SaaSGrid will pull all revenue associated with a customer. The first section "Non-Recurring Revenue" is the month's aggregate of non-recurring revenue for all customers.

“Total MRR” will automatically sum all your customer revenue, and can serve as an audit for your data.

If your business is measured in ARR, you can create a new tab and populate it with your ARR data. Set your cells to be divided by 12, and write the formulas to the Customer Revenue tab.

Expenses

On the “Expenses “ tab, Ending Cash Balance is the company’s cash balance as of the end of each month. Cash From Financing is cash you receive from fundraising that is excluded from your Burn calculations. Both must be aggregated for the month.

Below, classify your expenses into one of the four categories. These categories should be mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive of all costs. The category totals will sum automatically. The four cost categories are:

• Cost of Goods Sold (COGS): COGS are the costs directly associated with operating the product. For pure SaaS companies this typically consists of web hosting, purchased data necessary for the product to run, and the cost of the customer support team. For more detail on what to include in COGS, see our blog.
• Sales & Marketing (S&M): All the costs associated with go-to-market efforts, including salaries for marketers and sellers, commissions, and paid marketing campaigns.
• Research & Development (R&D): All costs associated with the product, design, and engineering teams, including salaries.
• General & Administrative (G&A): A catch-all for all remaining operating costs.

Each category can be split into up to 10 subcategories when inputted. Click on the ‘+’ button to expand the subcategories.

Headcount

On the “Headcount” tab, fill out the number of employees for the four cost categories mentioned above. 

Attributes

The last tab is “Attributes.” Here you can add attributes (customer metadata tags) which can be used to create customer Segments. You can add as many Attributes as you would like - these Attributes can be used to segment your customers by categories such as size and region.

Uploading your Template

Once the template is complete, upload the Excel file from your computer or select the correct Google Sheet from your Drive to create your Data Source. For Google Sheets, SaaSGrid recommends toggling on Auto-Sync.

Selecting your Data Sources

Once uploaded, SaaSGrid will ask where to map your spreadsheet data. Currently, spreadsheets can be used as a data source for Revenue, Billing, Costs, Cash, and Headcount.

Viewing your Spreadsheet Data

Select Workspace Data on the left hand pane, and click on Workspace Data on the main page to show a dropdown menu of all active data sources. Admin users can select a particular data source to view customers, or select "Workspace Data" to view all customer data in a single view.

Transaction Revenue Template

SaasGrid's transaction revenue template comes pre-formatted with a few sections - see below for a description of what to enter into each tab.

Like MRR Waterfall template, you can fill out the templates directly, or add additional tabs to the template and write formulas to the Transactions and Expenses tabs. While other sheets can have formulas or mappings for your data, SaaSGrid only reads the data on the two default tabs.

The Transaction Revenue Template does not contain a Headcount or Expenses section - this data will need to come from a default customer sheet.

Please don't change the names of the default tabs!

Transactions

On the tab "Transactions", include all transaction records with the customer name (specified with "Customer ID"), the type of revenue for the transaction (MRR, ARR, or Non-Recurring Revenue), Amount, Close Date (the date the transaction closed), Start Date (the date the transaction services were active), and End Date (the date the transaction services ended). Customer ID, Revenue Type, Amount, and Start Date are required fields for all transactions. If Close Date is empty for a transaction, SaaSGrid will mark the transaction as starting on the Start Date. If End Date is empty, SaaSGrid will look for a future start date to indicate a future transaction - if no transaction is found, then SaaSGrid will mark the customer as churned.

With this template, each transaction can have contract-level attributes. In the attributes column, add any transaction-level information - these attributes can then later be used to create Segments and Filters in SaaSGrid.

Please keep this tab named "Transactions"!

Customers

The last tab is “Customers.” Much like the MRR Waterfall template, attributes (or additional metadata tags) can be associated with any customer.

Expenses and Headcount

Currently, SaaSGrid will require a separate data source for Expenses and Headcount. To have Expenses and Headcount available with a Transactions template, follow the instructions for the MRR Waterfall template in creating those sections. In creating the workspace, make sure to set the Customer Source to your Transaction Data source, and the Accounting Source and Headcount Source to another spreadsheet.

Selecting your Data Sources

Once uploaded, SaaSGrid will ask where to map your spreadsheet data. Currently, spreadsheets can be used as a data source for Revenue, Billing, Costs, Cash, and Headcount.

Viewing your Spreadsheet Data

Select Workspace Data on the left hand pane, and click on Workspace Data on the main page to show a dropdown menu of all active data sources. Admin users can select a particular data source to view customers, or select "Workspace Data" to view all customer data in a single view.

Updating your Template

To update a template, go to the file under the Data Sources tab.

If your Data Source is Google Sheets, click the Sync button to refresh the data from your Google Sheet. If your data source is an Excel file, select Update Data, then Browse Files to add a new spreadsheet to replace the existing file. Note that the old file will not be saved. 

Limitations

While SaaSGrid can generate growth, retention, and efficiency metrics from spreadsheet data, there are some limitations to spreadsheet files:

• No Renewals metrics (CRM only)
• No Billing metrics (Stripe/Xero/Netsuite only)
• No Trials metrics (Stripe only)