Stripe Revenue Recognition (RevRec)

Revenue Recognition is currently in Beta, please contact support if you're interested in trying out the feature. MRR is also available through Stripe.

If you don't already have Stripe connected to Causal, configure from my.causal.app: Add data -> Stripe -> follow the provided steps

Metrics

• Cash - for all paid invoices, credited to the month based on paidAt date
  • Total - sum of Stripe and Non-Stripe payments
  • Stripe - payments processed via the stripe platform
  • Non-Stripe - payments collected outside of Stripe and manually marked as paid
• Accounts Receivable - outstanding balance for issued invoices. remains open until paid, voided or uncollectible
• Billed - Full invoice amount attributed to the month that the invoice is finalized
• Revenue - Based on accrual accounting methods, calculated on a daily basis, with proration for partial months
  • e.g. For a $1200 line item from 2020-01-01 to 2020-03-01, then Jan: $620, Feb: $580
  • e.g. For a $1200 line item from 2020-01-25 to 2020-02-25, then Jan: $270.97, Feb: $929.03
• Net Revenue - similar to revenue, but deducts any revenue previously accounted for when an invoice is marked voided or uncollectible (bad debt). Those negations happen in the month the invoice was marked in the terminal state
  • e.g. $100 in revenue was credited for a January invoice, when marked as voided in Feb, net revenue shows as -$100 in Feb
• Voided - The total invoice amount when marked as voided, in the month the action took place
• Bad Debt - The total invoice amount when marked as uncollectible, in the month the action took place
• Credit Balance - after a downgrade or when a credit note is applied, credits are attributed to the customer’s account, until applied to a future invoice
• Deferred Revenue - revenue balance that hasn’t yet been recognized by the term of a line item for remaining months in the future

How Causal calculates the metrics

Calculated by day, using accrual methods; excluding tax and discounts:

• for the entire duration of an invoice's line item term (month, quarter, year, etc)
• last day of a term is not considered inclusive
  • why? for subscriptions Stripe starts the next term on the day the last one ends, skipping the last day is necessary to avoid double counting
  • therefore, a one month term from Jan 1st to Feb 1st, will be credited up until and including Jan 31st (not Feb 1st).
• calculated by each line item in the invoice, based on the exact period and amount for each
  • e.g. an invoice with a line item for Jan of $1200 and another for Jan to Feb of $1200, results in: Jan: $1820, Feb: $580
  • You can override the invoice start and end dates for all contained line items, by adding the following metadata to the invoice in Stripe:
    • period_start
    • period_end
    • as format YYYY-MM-DD, e.g. 2020-10-31

Ignored Invoices

• Won disputed invoices are ignored
• Voided invoices are negated (net revenue, billed, etc) in the month that they are marked as void.
  • If you prefer to remove voided invoices from all calculations, please contact us to enable that feature.

Drill-down

• Drill-down by customer_id or price_id
  • if there are multiple events for a customer in a month, those will be summed
    • e.g. CustomerA has one invoice in Jan for $100 and another for $50, there will be a single drill-down total of $150 in Jan displayed for CustomerA
  • The drill-down table contains links to Stripe, to easily dive into specifics on their platform

Historical Data

We strive to keep historical data untouched

• e.g. voiding an invoice today will retain previously accounted earnings, and negate that revenue in the current month when the invoice was voided
• exception: a back-dated invoice will modify revenue for previous months accordingly
  • e.g. creating an invoice in February with a line item for January of $50, will retroactively increase revenue for January by $50