Software & SaaS businesses
Run the software business, not just the software
Your product has a pipeline, a contract, a renewal and a ledger behind it. Allwis holds all four — so ARR, the invoice and the accounts are three views of one set of numbers rather than three spreadsheets somebody reconciles at month end.
ARR, as at any date
Derived from the contracts themselves. No snapshot table to fall out of date.
A bridge that reconciles
Opening plus every movement equals closing, per customer and in total, to the cent.
Revenue in the right period
Deferred on invoice, recognised as it is earned, tied back to the ledger.
One group, one ledger
Operating company, IP holder, overseas subsidiary — consolidated, not re-keyed.
Recurring revenue you can explain, not just quote
“What is our ARR” is arithmetic. “Why is it $180k higher than last quarter” is the question that actually gets asked, and answering it is what a spreadsheet is worst at.
Allwis derives annual recurring revenue from the contract lines and their dated price steps, so you can ask for it as at any date — including one nobody thought to snapshot at the time. There is deliberately no stored ARR figure: a snapshot is a cache that can disagree with its source, and on the day it does, nobody can say which is right.
Between any two dates it produces a bridge, splitting the change into new logos, reactivations, upsells, price rises, price cuts, downgrades and churn. Opening plus every movement equals closing — per customer and in total, to the cent. There is no balancing “other” line, because a bridge with one is a bridge nobody trusts, and the first unexplained dollar ends the conversation.
ARR derived as at any date, and the bridge that explains every movement. Watch on YouTube
Net & gross revenue retention
NRR excludes new logos by construction, which is the whole point of the metric. GRR caps each customer at what they were worth at the start, so expansion cannot mask churn.
Constant currency, one rate
Both ends are stated at the same rate. Revaluing each end at its own would report a customer who renewed at exactly the same price as an upsell.
Multi-year uplifts, priced properly
A contract with an annual increase carries dated price steps, so the uplift is reported as the uplift it is instead of year one’s price repeated for three years.
Price and volume, separated
A change in what a customer pays is split from a change in what they bought, so a price rise is never flattered by growth that was really expansion.
Revenue recognised in the period it is earned
A twelve-month subscription invoiced in July is not twelve months of July revenue. Allwis spreads it across the term it is actually earned in — straight-line across the subscription period, on a delivery date, or by milestone where the recognition rule is a delivery plan rather than a formula.
The contract dates already sit on the deal behind the invoice, so scheduling one is a confirmation rather than data entry. Straight-line is weighted by days, not months, so a term starting on the 15th does not invent a thirteenth month, and the slices sum to the contract value exactly with nothing left to sweep up.
A monthly run posts the journals — deferred revenue out, revenue in — dated at each period end, so a month still running is never booked early. The deferred revenue rollforward then shows opening, additions, recognised and closing beside the ledger balance. It is built from the schedules rather than from the general ledger on purpose: derived from the ledger the two would agree by construction and prove nothing, and whether the plan and the accounts still say the same thing is precisely the question a rollforward exists to answer.
The same arithmetic runs the other way for what you pay up front — annual cloud commitments, software licences, insurance, rent in advance — spread across the months they are consumed in instead of landing whole in the month the bill arrived, with a prepayments rollforward that ties back the same way.
Deferred on the invoice date, recognised month by month, with a rollforward that ties to the ledger. Watch on YouTube
From pipeline to invoice to cash
Pipeline in MRR
Deals carry recurring line items and a billing interval, so the pipeline is measured in the same units as the revenue it becomes, with forecast categories and enforced stage progression.
Targets and attainment
Set each salesperson a recurring-revenue number for a period and see attainment beside it, plus how many times over their open pipeline covers what is left to win.
Recurring billing
Plan-based customers get a draft invoice raised automatically each billing cycle, posted to your real chart of accounts.
Paid online
Stripe checkout on the invoice, with payment recorded against the ledger rather than reconciled back to it later.
Commission when the money lands
Calculated on payment, not on signature — reviewed by AI for anomalies, and always approved by a person before anything is paid.
Budgets from your own history
Forecasts drafted from your journal history plus contracted subscriptions and stage-weighted pipeline, with budget-versus-actual variance tracking.
Watch a licence conversation become a deal and a priced proposal. Watch on YouTube
One group, one set of books
Software companies rarely stay one company for long — a local operating entity, a holding company for the IP, a subsidiary opened for a market that needed a local invoice. Allwis treats the group as the unit: provision a new entity top-down, and consolidate the whole structure from the same ledger with intercompany elimination, foreign exchange and non-controlling interests applied. The consolidated view is not a report someone rebuilds each month; it is the same data, rolled up.
Multi-currency throughout, with AU and NZ tax and payroll compliance built in rather than bolted on.
Worth knowing up front. Recurring billing here works from plans and contracts — each cycle drafts an invoice. There is no usage metering: if you bill per API call, per seat-hour or per gigabyte, that quantity has to come from your own product. Everything downstream of the number — the invoice, the revenue schedule, the ARR movement — is handled.
And if you build on Allwis as well
Some software businesses are here for both halves: they run their own company on Allwis and publish on it. Modules, workflow nodes and AI agents built on the SDK are distributed through the Cultiver Marketplace, which handles installation and billing while Allwis stays the identity and data layer. The revenue that comes back from it lands in the same ledger as everything above.
See it against your own numbers
We bring your books across from the system you use now, at no charge, and the core is live the next business day.