SaaS

Subscriptions and ARR · the amendment series

In the SaaS vertical a subscription is a series of amendments with effective dates, and ARR is derived from a point in that series rather than typed into a field. The Amendment series appears when you open a renewal and shows the Effective date, Kind, MRR and Seats of every change, with ARR today next to it.

The question that derails a revenue meeting is a simple one: why did ARR change? When ARR is a field somebody fills in, the answer is an investigation. When it is derived, the answer is a row in a table. The SaaS vertical took the second path: a subscription is a series of amendments, and ARR is the result of applying them up to a date.

What an amendment is

An amendment is any change to the subscription that alters what the customer pays or uses: moving up a plan, moving down a plan, buying seats, giving seats back, renegotiating price, terminating. Each amendment carries the date it takes effect, its kind, the resulting MRR and the seat count. A subscription therefore does not have a single state, it has a timeline.

Where to find it

Open SaaS from the menu and go to the Renewals tab.
Click the date under Term end on the renewal you want to investigate. Only renewals tied to a subscription will open.
The Amendment series panel appears below the table, with one row per amendment: Effective, Kind, MRR and Seats.
In the panel header, next to the title, ARR today shows the annual recurring revenue derived from that series as of today.
Click the same date again to close the panel.

Example: The Acme Data subscription shows three amendments: Feb 1 with Kind new and MRR of USD 3,000 on 20 seats, May 15 with Kind expansion and MRR of USD 4,200 on 30 seats, and Sep 1 with Kind contraction and MRR of USD 3,600 on 24 seats. Next to it, ARR today reads USD 43,200. Nobody has to ask where the number came from: it is the September amendment times twelve.

Why this matters in practice

Audit: you can point at exactly which change produced today's figure, with its date.
Honest backdating: an amendment with a past effective date does not silently rewrite history, it joins the series with its own date.
Renewal conversation: seeing that the customer moved up in May and back down in September completely changes the proposal you bring.
Consistency with the account snapshot: the MRR shown in the Account snapshot and ARR today come from the same series, not from two sources that can drift apart.

ARR and MRR are not the same measure

MRR is the recurring monthly amount. ARR is the annualized value of the same commitment. The vertical uses MRR on amendments and renewals, because that is the grain at which changes happen, and uses ARR when the subject is the impact on the year, as in Pipeline (ARR) on the Account snapshot and in ARR today. Adding one off revenue to these numbers would be a mistake: a month with one big one off sale and a shrinking subscription base looks great on a revenue chart and terrible here, and it is this one that predicts next year.

Limits and common questions

The screen shows No amendment recorded: the subscription exists, but no change has been loaded for it yet.
The renewal does not open when clicked: that renewal is not tied to a subscription, so there is no series to show.
ARR today is missing: no value could be derived for today, usually because there is no amendment in effect.
Every amount is shown in the currency of its own amendment. Amounts in different currencies are not added together.
This panel is read only. Recording a new amendment is not done from this screen.

💡 Before any renewal conversation, open the account's Amendment series. The question is not how much the customer pays, it is what their last move was and in which direction.

Open this article inside the system →