SaaSOptics - The Perfect Fit for our Subscription Needs

Like most start-ups, we moved from the subscription spreadsheet to the SaaSOptics platform so our initial need of having an automated system in place was solved immediately. Since then it's only gotten better. It was kind of like not realizing we had a headache until it went away. The more we use the SaaSOptics platform the more we find out it can give us, from ARR to Churn to Invoicing, to collections and more. We've also discovered that SaaSOptics as a company has a very strong commitment to customer success and that means we have access to people who really know the product and can advise us on how to achieve our goals for using the platform.

Pros

Pretty much everything, and I'm not kidding. It's a fairly complex software to gain proficiency with but once we did we were continually amazed by the additional functionality we discovered on an almost weekly basis. The flexibility of the invoicing system, the crazy extensive reporting capabilities and integrations with our Salesforce and QBO accounts make our work experience so much better. Plus our Board loves the data coming out of the solution. The other thing I love about the software is their customer support team. Wow, they are some of the best support people I've ever encountered. Totally worth signing up for that aspect by itself.

Cons

It is a complex system to learn and I didn't have proper expectations set going into the UAT. I was frustrated that it wasn't more intuitive but having learned how to use the software I now realize that it would've gone much better earlier if I had just committed to learning the system earlier. One good thing about this is that I can make mistakes and undo them when I do.

Great Revenue software!

SaaSOptics made a huge difference throughout our company, from sales order management (implementing process controls on the GTM team) through to collections and dunning (dropping our AR from 65 to 32 in 3 months). It's been great for our size of company. I'm sure there are more robust softwares out there that can do more, but all of those were out of our price range. I also enjoy the fact that SaaSOptics is continually pushing out new features that directly impact and improve every day processes, not just higher level reporting or UI. Both high level reporting and UI changes are important, but being able to deliver on all 3 fronts, rather than just 2 means that SaaSOptics has been a pretty good company to grow alongside.

Pros

Customizable revenue schedules that are significantly better than the previous excel spreadsheets. This software dropped periodic revenue reconciliation from 4-6 hours to 30 min as a result. The collections and dunning automation is a lifesaver for small accounting/Finance operations teams. If you're only software option for managing Sales Tax is the baked in option within QBO, their Avatax integration is significant improvement on QBO.

Cons

The reporting is not as intuitive to team members who are not active and continuous users. Makes a LOT of sense to me, but I notice there's a learning curve for non-SaaSOptics users to understand the reporting.

Future invoices, Tax options & Client Billing (info) Profiles

I do enjoy how easy it is to raise credits/invoices & sync these transactions to Quick Books from SaaSOptics. It is also very easy to reverse revenue by raising the transaction from the contract. The main issues I have, however, with this software can be narrowed down to - Future invoices, Tax options & Client Billing (info) Profiles: 1. I keep a self-maintained spreadsheet with future invoice details due to the following: Future invoices are not always pulling when the date is current; they are not appearing in the order processing (ready to bill) list within SaaSOptics because the 'e-invoice queue' check mark is dropping off. To avoid errors, to ensure that the client receives their invoice when the date is current, I track this info on a spreadsheet outside of SaaS. 2. I keep a maintained spreadsheet with billing profile information for our clients due to the following: Inconsistencies on the billing profiles between SaaSOptics, Sales Force & Quickbooks. Billing information can not be trusted, ease of use could be improved to avoid syncing headaches. To avoid errors, to ensure that the client receives their invoice with correct billing info, I track this info on a spreadhsset, outside of Saas. 3. I keep a maintained spreadsheet with tax tables and user tax details due to the following: The inability to add multiple sales tax rates in SaaSOptics / Quickbooks. Ease of use could be improved by allowing multiple rates to be added into the system & allowing tax addresses to be saved in the system. I calculate tax outside of SaaS/QB, maintain this info for reporting purposes & manually enter tax details on the tax line in QB/SaaS. My other option would be to create line items for tax ( I have discussed this option with QB) but then it would pull into SaaSOptics as a product line (not tax) which would in turn throw the financial summary out of balance. Total invoice line items scheduled would increase by the tax amount which would not balance to the revenue. 4. I pull data & cross-compare SaaSOptics with Quickbooks to fix the tax errors due to the incorrect sales tax rate is generating on the invoice. If the sales tax is blank in Quick Books but is set to taxable in SaaSOptics, an "inactive" rate pulls onto the invoice which is not at the correct rate. At the same time, when I pull this info, I also cross-compare against my self maintained spreadsheet to correct errors on the billing profiles. Thank you for your time!

Pros

Financial Summary - Overview of account

Cons

Tax options

Good Software needs to upscale and develop to cater to larger group of organisations

Customer Care is great and very responsive.

Pros

The billing through this software is a breeze and it makes it very easy to track AR.

Cons

Reports can be made more interactive and functionality should be improved to make the user comfortable in constructing their own reports. Also I personally saw that 1 customer can only have 1 currency attached to it. I would suggest this should change and multiple currencies should be allocated to a customer. The currency freeze can be at a contract level. With organisational structures now it is important to have this organisational hierarchy feature in SaaS Optics

Amazing Analytics

Again, the people have been incredible to work with. Management of imported historical data is not user friendly, but the management analytics functionality is pretty powerful. I am hoping they implement some of the invoicing customization/flexibility we need.

Pros

The reporting that comes from SaaSOptics is a game changer. It gives our management the information they need to understand the health of our subscription business and make critical strategic decisions. It also allows us to present our business in the most valuable light to outside parties evaluating our business. The subscription management features of the business are very helpful in managing renewals. The people at SaaSOptics are great to work with

Cons

The implementation was more challenging than we expected We had a lot of data that was not necessarily structured for a seamless import into SaasSOptics. this added a lot of time and resource to our implementation. The invoicing is not as flexible as we would like.

Support & CS are vital

Pros

I am so happy that a customer success team has been added. This has been so important as we build our dashboards and reports that we use on a weekly/monthly basis.

Cons

The implementation and training was good but there was a lot I didn't learn that I didn't realize until after implementation was complete. There are a lot of features but I often have trouble figuring out where to go or what reports I need.

A fantastic and much-needed platform for growing SaaS businesses

Overall, I'd say that SaaSOptics has, after some up-front work to get it configured to our requirements, completely delivered on the lofty expectations we had for it. We have a two-person finance team managing a business that's doing >$15M of ARR. As you can imagine, these brave souls simply would not have time to pull together the sort of deep multi-faceted business intelligence reports and ongoing analytics that SaaSOptics gives us at basically the push of a button. It's been a very important tool for us as we manage growth and optimize our revenue streams.

Pros

SaaSOptics is incredibly flexible and the only solution of its kind that we've seen successfully integrate both Salesforce and Quickbooks in a way that actually dramatically saves time and improves data integrity. We test drove some competing solutions (all far more expensive) and, unfortunately, many of them actually created more issues for us than they solved.

Cons

The flip side of the incredible level of flexibility/customizability that SaaSOptics has is that it is not the simplest solution to learn to work with. While recent updates continue to simplify and enhance the UX, it's still a tool best suited for "power users" and takes some time to learn and use to its fullest extent. If you expect this to be "plug and play", you will be disappointed and not get the full value of the solution. With that said, it was certainly no more complex or challenging than implementing Salesforce.com for the first time, which is basically a rite of passage for most SaaS companies, so I would not let the learning curve deter you from investing in SaaSOptics. Our experience is that benefits of the time-saving workflows and powerful reporting far outweigh the time investment required to get ramped up. Their support has always been excellent and responsive as well, which makes a big difference with a more complex product like this.

Invaluable for Small Subscription Business

This app is invaluable to our finance team as we are a small team for a growing start-up business and do not have the time to calculate and manage revenue in spreadsheets. SaaSOptics allows us to process orders from Salesforce, automatically generate revenue schedules, and then sync the invoices to the general ledger in QBO with very little manual input. In addition, it provides trustworthy financial and analytic reporting, so we can record revenue in accordance to GAAP standards as well as report on common SaaS Metrics for our BOD meetings. Finally, the SaaSOptics cadence module automates collection emails, so AR management is a breeze. I highly recommend for any accountant looking for a subscription / recurring revenue tool to work alongside QuickBooks!

Pros

My favorite features are the smooth integrations with Salesforce and Quickbooks, the automatic email cadences for improved AR management, and the reporting functionality, both for financial and metric reporting.

Cons

In the way that we use SaaSOptics (with Salesforce and Quickbooks), I have no complaints! The syncs work smoothly and easily. However, we did have some issues with the Intacct integration and the recording of payments from Stripe. While the payment recording is seamless in Quickbooks, in Intacct custom automation had to be built in Intacct in order to match the partial Stripe deposits from SaaSOptics to payments and mark the invoices as fully paid while writing off the credit card fee.

Saas was a life saver

Love everyone i have worked with and the software.

Pros

The ease of reporting. Having all the information in one place is a lifesaver.

Cons

i struggle with finding the correct report. I would love a class on reporting.

Good with Basics, Needs Fine-Tuning

Pros

e-Invoicing and cadences; Stripe integration for ACH/credit card payments; SFDC integration for deal processing

Cons

difficult implementation; support often does not thoroughly investigate issues and relies heavily on customer to figure out the problem; unable to choose which QuickBooks items sync over; Avalara integration is clunky

Great tool & great support

SaaS Optics does exactly what it's supposed to do & does it in a clean & clear way. Revenue recognition is complicated but they've made it so much less onerous. It's a very good idea to spend the time on the training so you can utilize the system fully - there are lots valuable tools that will save you time & confusion (ask me how I know this.) Support is on point, all the time. I never have to wait long for a response & they always address my questions or requests thoroughly. The software & site is very reliable & stable as well.

Pros

The Home screen! Love to have tons of information & links to information & processes all in one handy place. Also, they aren't wasting my time waiting for pages to load because they had to gussy it up with a lot of graphics.

Cons

There needs to be a way to set different user access levels. Also, I sometimes can't figure out how to get particular information from reports. Also, often auditors want to see the daily revenue recognition schedule & we can't seem to get that. I assume because it would be a gigantic report. I wish there were a few more embedded links. For instance, every time I change the closing date, it kind of drives me crazy that I can't just click on the date to update it, or click on "Closing Date" but instead have to click on "Update Settings." A bit more click-ficiency would be super appreciated. ;)

Does exactly what we need it to

When we went through the procurement process, SaaSOptics ended up winning over Zuora primarily on price, but also because we were impressed at the intuitive nature of the product. Since then, we haven't been disappointed. The software does exactly what we wanted it. My only qualms would be with the Finance Reporting, as not having analytical data included as optional columns makes the processes of bringing that information in painful and time consuming (downloading an analytical report and using a vlookup to cross reference based on customer or contract numbers). Overall, this is a great product, and I appreciate the constant improvements that are being rolled out regularly.

Pros

Ease of use. Price point. Flexible depending on business case (high volume, low dollar vs low volume, high dollar)

Cons

Lack of analytical data available in Finance reports. Putting data in is still manual, which is okay for now but causes scalability issues. For Auto-Process feature when syncing, user should be able to choose what data is okay to make this workable. Once a transaction has been brought over through the syncing process, it shouldn't be brought over again (creates a duplicate issue that also makes Auto-Process feature unusable).

We implemented SaaSOptics to prepare for our first audit and eventual entry to capital market

GAAP Compliant revenue recognition and Analytics necessary to support capital market inquiries.

Pros

Our external auditors were included in the evaluation and selection process for a GAAP compliant revenue recognition package. During the audit, I was able to use SaaSOptics to quickly and easily provide revenue recognition reports and deferred revenue calculations that were reviewed and approved by our auditors. With the help of the SaasOptics implementation team, we were able to import 5 years of detail invoicing activity from QuickBooks and build a supportable balance sheet and approved revenue history. The result was a successful audit followed by the ability to provide all of the revenue reporting and analytics that our investors requested in a timely manner. SaaSOptics gave me the ability to provide deep insights into our customers, revenue patterns and our business almost instantaneously because of the reporting and analytic tools that are an integral part of the package.

Cons

I would like to the month end financial accounting interface to be more automated. It is still a manual process to prepare the necessary reports and input the month end transactions into QuickBooks.

Excellent Tool for GAAP and Non-GAAP SaaS Reporting

SaaSOptics is the best tool for subscription metrics and revenue/deferred revenue calculations that we've come across in the marketplace. It combines reliable GAAP calculations needed for financial statements with a wide range of Non-GAAP Subscription metrics. Easy to implement and plug into other cloud-based tools at a very low TCO. Customer Support has always been excellent, with prompt and thoughtful responses. Highly recommended.

Pros

Approach to calculations (decoupling of invoicing from rev rec), robust reporting suite, continued evolution of product, customer support.

Cons

Not much, can sometimes be tough to run complex reports or imports, but customer support has been able to help with this. Integrations with NetSuite/Intacct not yet available, but those are in the works.

SaaSOptics is Great

Verify the information all the time and it is always perfect, never a flaw (on their part!). Whenever help is needed they have very explicit directions loaded so 98% of the time one only needs to click Help and the answer is there at your fingertips. I'm old fashioned so everything looks too expensive to me (including bread and fruit), but the system has proven invaluable for deferring income and all of it's reports and it's ability to sync with QuickBooks in a snap, perfectly every time. So, we do not let it go. Highly recommended as one of the perfect systems out there.

Pros

The only thing that tracks deferred income and gives fantastic reports, all accurately, while syncing with QuickBooks.

Cons

Don't have periods "locked", so that can "unlock" them to make a change and then lock again so reports stay consistent. In other words, would like the QuickBooks feature of being able to go back and see the December 2016 report within the system and have a track (transaction detail report) of what was changed after the end of the period.

SaasOptics - awesome subscription management solution!

We are a rapidly growing enterprise SAAS company with 100s of customers. We plan to remain on Quickbooks for a while, and were searching for a comprehensive subscription management, billing and rev rec solution. So glad we found Saasoptics. Very clear documentation including videos, comprehensive feature set that covers all contract scenarios, and workflows that make sense for the business. We have been very happy and feel well supported too. We have the solution integrated with Salesforce and Quickbooks. I would highly recommend Saasoptics to anyone evaluating a billing solution.

Pros

- Feature set supports all contract scenarios - Easy to get under the hood and understand how it works, builds confidence in numbers - Integrated with Quickbooks and SFDC - Rev rec is rock solid

Cons

I'd love to see more robust renewals management integration with SFDC. Looking forward to seeing the April release that enhances that functionality.

Very Good Product - Some features need fine tuning

We always struggled with the follow up on outstanding invoices. Using the Cadences has helped us bring old accounts up to date and chase our money! This has been an outstanding improvement to our overall business practices.

Pros

I like using transactions to drive invoice creation rather than relying on Quick Books memorized transaction lists to produce recurring charges. It's easier to make mid term changes and to track revenue growth as well as projecting future revenue based on transactions and auto-renewals.

Cons

A few of the newer features have some bugs, ie: Statements dont show CURRENT invoices, and they also dont reflect all payments made (it's a little glitchy). One of the biggest drawbacks is that the autopay feature is set at the CLIENT level. For monthly subscribers (on autopay) who purchase development time (which we give net 30 terms to), it's a headache to manage in order to ensure that they do not get charged when they dont' authorize it. Many of these customers would prefer to pay by check for the larger invoices and when they are autopay customers, we are constantly adjusting due dates to avoid an auto-charge. Changing this setting to a default client setting, with the option to turn it off on the invoice or even the contract level would be a FANTASTIC upgrade for us and I'm sure for many other users.

What were they thinking?!

UI, UI, UI. My business recently enrolled in SaaSOptics, a financial reporting service for SaaS business. Seldom have I encountered a user experience so bad. For starters, there is no link for user to log in on their home page. You actually need to navigate to an obscure link hidden away in an email. And the URL is not something easy to remember. Although they do this for security reasons, to reduce the risk of accounts getting hacked. If you manage to log in, you'll find that the summary lines you want for each report, such as total, are hidden at the very bottom of the report. When the report has hundreds of lines, you really don't want to do that. Then you'll try to find the most basic things, and struggle. For example, is your report to be found under Finance Reports or Analytics Reports? Should you look in Reports Dashboards or Reports Snapshots? With titles so specific (everything in SaaSOptics is both financial and analytical in nature), who needs a General Confusion Officer? Then you'll discover what you're looking for is not there, so you'll want to create one. It's so complicated that you have to watch a 30 min video before you start. So you'll resort to their Business Metrics report, labeled "possibly the only report you'll ever need". Turns out they decided that it's better to place bar charts of completely unrelated metrics side by side than to put successive months of the same metric together. So to look at growth of any metric across just three months, you need to look at columns that span an entire page across 42 columns. Some timelines are horizontal; others are vertical. The last month I am shown is September of last year, and there is no obvious way to change the time period shown. For the love of God, can someone tell these people that user experience matters?

Pros

Still looking for a pro. Update: Within three business days of my review, I was contacted by a SaaSOptics employee with an offer to help. So I have now found a pro: their support seems to be attentive. I have found their leadership to be extremely attentive and helpful

Cons

The UI.

Huge Time Saver but Could Use Some Reporting Tweaks

I use Saasoptics everyday and while it has greatly reduced time spent in my department on billing processes we still do not use it as our main finance reconciliatory system due some small differences in our accounting methods with those built into the system (365 day schedule vs 360, no accounting for leap years, no customization of rev rec periods besides the built in choices).

Pros

The billing functions are intuitive and a time saver.

Cons

It is not fully compatible with our tax system when synced to QB which causes myself or people on my team to go back into every invoice generated in QB to re-save and create a tax line.

Definitely recommend

SaasOptics is a great tool and has much functionality..... A little bit of a learning curve but once we worked with it, not sure why we didn't purchase it sooner. Customer support and onboarding was great - very helpful. Would highly recommend you check it out! We are very happy that we did!!

Pros

Great functionality and takes away the manual effort on our part

Cons

Had a little bit of a learning curve, but put the time in and you will be happy you did

JK

Overall, pretty happy

Pros

Transactions are easily entered & invoicing is well automated. Revenue recognition is well done.

Cons

Synching to AvaTax and Quickbooks causes a lot of things to lock and not be changeable.

Very powerful tool for managing SaaS revenue and invoicing.

Our organization is a SaaS startup, and this product has been invaluable. It has offered so much organization, clarity, and insight into our revenue stream, churn rate, invoicing, etc. I can't imagine going back to a time when SaaSOptics was not available to my team. Great product!

Pros

The ability to accurately recognize, track, and predict recurring revenue and invoices.

Cons

UI and ease of use, although this has improved lately

Love this product - please tweak your UI

We can invoice in a matter of minutes not days. Most of our subscriptions start at the beginning of a month so I have it all set up when I process service orders I can just send invoices when the system tells me to. Collections is great too !

Pros

That I can set up my subscription invoices and renewals so easily. And, collections is 100% more efficient.

Cons

A customer record - why do I have to always scroll to the bottom to save. Your form has so much extra space. And, when I'm processing a sales order from SFDC. You have to hover over the "hamburg" icon and select Process usually easy enough. But, to exclude the screen is so small I can't find with out scrolling - that seams stupid to me. Biggest complaint is the UI.

Excellent SaaS Billing Tool

Very great tool to automate billing and revenue accounting

Pros

Handles rev rec seamlessly, great for B2B billing, super customizable, syncs with salesforce extremely well

Cons

Doesn't have a great customer facing billing or purchasing option, some of the ARR calculations can be a little wonky

First 45 days of software for new hire

I have only been with the company using this software for 45 days. I have found it the system to be good for deferred revenue and detailing contracts for our company. I find it hard to change the invoice numbers to what we have invoiced through our accounting system. I also find it cumbersome to go to the search option or customer each time you want to find a "sub" customer. For instance, level one may be Mickey Mouse for a customer, then the name of the next level is Minnie Mouse. These two customers are one in the same and should flow up to Mickey Mouse. It may just be because I am a new user or our system was not set up to do it that way. I have found that I can change something on one customer but not another. I have not called customer support yet so I did not score that option.

Extraordinary Customer Support

It has transformed the way I run the business, positively improving our insight, order-to-cash, and reporting. THe level of customer support is extraordinary. I feel that the support team really cares about my success. They are top notch which is critical for a complex product/platform.

Pros

The subscription revenue recognition, billing and metric reporting are critical to running our business

Cons

Implementing and leveraging SaaSOptics is a commitment of time and effort. it is a powerful tool, but not necessarily a simple on e to use. It is worth it but you should know that if you don't commit, you won't reap the benefits.

Great customer support

SaaSOptics was already in use when I joined the company. It was very easy to be trained on and whenever I had questions, customer support was incredibly helpful.

Pros

Very easy to use and great support

Cons

Revenue being based on days instead of months. It's easy to adjust, but time consuming when having to adjust revenue for several txns.

TDn2K, LLC

The implementation was not smooth because customer support was not good, but once we figured it out, the transactions loaded pretty smoothly. Ongoing, the system has been easy to work with. There are some addition reports that would be nice to have.

Pros

Easy to use.

Cons

Not enough filters available on reports

Great Program

This is a great program to recognize revenue on our day to day sales and for our long term projects. It is easy to use and keeps all our billing on track.

Pros

I love the revenue recognition.

Cons

I can't say there is anything I don't like about the system.

Excellent in all respects

I set this up myself with minimal help from SAAS Optics. Very powerful for large and small companies. Great pricing structure. Look forward to growing my company with it!

Pros

Easy yet powerful.

Cons

Would like standalone cash receipt capability.

Quality Customer Service & a customizable product

Whenever I get caught or need help, Customer Service is amazing. They always get back to me within a day, leave detailed instructions, and are willing and available for a quick call if I'm still having trouble. Any difficulties I have with the product are well made up for by the amazing customer services.

Pros

I like the organization of invoices, reporting, and the opportunity to create customizable dashboards and reports.

Cons

It's very involved, lots of repetition in tab names and dropdown names, and the syncing back and forth between Quickbooks is very manual.

Have been very impressed by the ease of use and implementation so far

Pros

Implementation has been relatively straightforward and so far it has been able to accommodate all of the needs we've required.

Cons

The UI is definitely a bit dated looking. But since it gets the job done and the price is fair, that's ok.

Been using the product for 5+ yrs, it's great

I have been using the product since 2012 and it has delayed our decision year after year to move away from QB to a mid-size accounting system. I went the the product largely due to pricing early on, but have been really impressed with the ease of use and the improved reporting. We get all of the necessary data that we need for GAAP reporting as well as for SaaS Metrics calculations. We have been through several Big 4 audits and the system has really reduced our time in providing backup for the audit. Would highly recommend the product.

Review of SaaSOPtics

We went live with the software as of February 1. It gives us what we were looking for with regard to the analytics. The sync of information with QB does not allow us to utilize the custom fields in QB the way we were and this makes it very difficult to process our sales commissions each month the way we need to. I would like to see more filters available on the existing financial reports that would allow greater flexibility in report generation, and even the capability to create reports, both financial and analytical.

SO user 3+ years

We have used SaasOptics to track our SAAS contracts. It does a good job of maintaining the invoice schedule and revenue schedule separate of each other. A few ideas for improvement would be the ability to combine products so that the invoice generated is a combination of the products. The early termination process is not as intuitive as I would like for it to be. The reports are standard but get the job done and can be customized.

Wouldn't do Rev Recognition without this!

As an outsourced accounting company, we service lots of clients who have saas revenue models. We have gotten to the point where we will not due revenue recognition any other way - and we tell our clients that. They must use Saas Optics (the alternative is to pay us a large amount of money!) Of course they all do and love it. My staff won't use any other tool and are so glad that someone has made rev recognition so easy!

Very good option for subscription based businesses

We used this software to convert a subscription based business from using QuickBooks invoicing to SaaSOptics e-invoicing. This was the answer to all of our invoicing and e-invoicing needs. We do wish that they would expand the software to address other needs but I understand that they are staying in their lane. We are very happy with the results for our subscription business and it is almost effortless to invoice now.

Great SaaS revenue recognition tool

We have used SaaSOptics for about 2 years now. The system has allowed us to stay on Quickbooks longer without transitioning over to NetSuite or Intacct. The tool has saved us countless hours of managing contracts and its awesome that some information is pushed directly from Salesforce.

Subscription based invoicing solution.

Invoicing for our subscription based business is faster and easier after using SaaSOptics. We can do things we could not do in QuickBooks but still sync the information to QuickBooks. We are very happy with the results.

Okay Great product

Once you learn how to use, you'll love. My company uses for an out of the box reason and even though we are using for something other than why it was made it works very well.

Highly Recommend SaaSOptics!

SaaSOptics transformed our revenue recognition process, migrating it from an Excel spreadsheet to an automated platform integrated with our billing system.