How do I check how a SaaS product’s customers sign up and pay each month?
Ask for the billing export itself and rebuild the customer picture from it: who signed up, on which plan, when they paid, which payments failed and who cancelled. Compare your numbers with the seller’s summary. Any gap is a question to put to the seller before you go further.
The seller’s dashboard is a summary, and summaries can hide things. Ask for the raw billing records and the bank deposits for the same period, then check that they agree. Look at how customers arrive: a free trial, a sales call, a partner, a referral. Ask how many arrive without help from the seller personally.
Look at the payment side. Customers on annual plans, discounted plans, plans paid by cheque, or accounts created for friends all behave differently from ordinary monthly customers. Ask for failed payments and how they were recovered, because a card that quietly expires is a common source of lost customers. Check refunds and credits too.
Finally, follow the leavers. Read the cancellation reasons if any were recorded, and see whether cancellations cluster after a price change, an outage or a missing feature. Ask which customers are large enough that losing one would be felt, and whether any contract is held on terms that do not match the standard plans. Write down every difference you find and ask the seller to explain it. Ask for a sample of individual customer histories and read them from sign-up to the latest payment.
Key takeaways
- Rebuild the customer list from raw billing, not a dashboard.
- Ask about odd arrangements: free accounts, special prices, manual payments.
- Study cancellations for clusters tied to price or outages.
- Write down each gap and ask the seller to explain it.
Related reading
14 pages on the same subject, grouped by topic.
Buying
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Due diligence
- Expert answerHow do I check how a small SaaS product handles customer cancellations?
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Selling
Sources
This answer is checked against primary sources. Links were last confirmed on the dates shown.
- 01Business Development Bank of CanadaGovernmentHow to conduct due diligence when buying a business
- 02Business Development Bank of CanadaGovernmentWhat are the steps to buying a business?
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