Prinsee is a fractional CFO for SaaS that works like a forward-deployed analyst. We bring your accounting, billing, CRM, payroll and the conversations behind them into Perch, so the right numbers are at your fingertips the moment you need them. When you need more than a number, we’re already in your Slack.
Why did operating expenses rise $38.6K in September?
Reading the ledger, payroll, Slack and call notes…Read 212 ledger entries · 2 payroll runs · 1 Slack thread · 1 call · explains 94% of the change
Mostly people and one software change. Two engineers started on September 15 (+$13.8K) and Datadog moved to annual usage pricing (+$9.2K). Expect October to run about $13.7K higher again, with both hires on payroll for a full month.
Operating expenses, August to September $K
Ryan ErwinYour analyst
The Datadog jump is real, but the annual plan saves about $18K over the year if usage holds. I set an alert at 120% of committed volume and added both hires to the Q4 forecast.
Reply, or ask a follow-up…
New engineersTwo started Sep 15; half a month of pay+$13.8KGusto
Both backend offers are signed. They start on the fifteenth.Maya · Hiring sync · Aug 21
DatadogMoved to annual usage pricing+$9.2KQuickBooks
Moving Datadog to annual usage pricing. Saves about $18K over the year if log volume holds.Jon · #eng-leads · Sep 4
Most bad decisions start with a number nobody checked.
Not fraud. Not incompetence. Plumbing. Three systems count the same thing three ways, and the board deck picks one. These five show up in the first month, almost every time.
Customer count1 of 5
Three systems, three customer counts.
HubSpot counts closed-won companies. Stripe counts billing accounts, so one customer with two subscriptions shows up twice. QuickBooks counts whoever got an invoice. None of them is wrong, and none of them is your customer count.
The fix. One ID per real customer, mapped to every system and checked every month. Churn, NRR and CAC stop changing depending on who pulled the report.
Monthly churn, %2 of 5
As reported by billingCorrected
Churn that isn’t churn.
A card fails, the retry creates a new subscription, and your billing system records a cancellation plus a brand-new customer. Churn spikes. Nothing actually happened, except that your board just saw the spike.
The fix. Re-created subscriptions are reclassified before they reach a dashboard. In this example, reported GRR of 91.5% was really 95.8%.
Cash vs. MRR3 of 5
Cash up. Growth flat.
A customer prepays a year up front. The bank balance jumps $420K and everyone feels richer. Recurring revenue didn’t move, and next year’s cash from that customer just arrived early.
The fix. Cash and recurring revenue tracked side by side, with deferred revenue rolled forward every month, so runway and growth each tell their own story.
CAC payback, months4 of 5
The payback drift nobody noticed.
CAC payback crept from 14 months to 26 over six quarters. Each quarter looked fine next to the one before it. By the time the board asked, the marketing budget had been set for another year.
The fix. Trend lines with thresholds you set, flagged the month they cross, not two quarters later.
Checked before the data room5 of 5
Metric
Dashboard
Rebuilt from source
Matches
ARR
$3.06M
$3.06M
Customers
212
212
Deferred revenue
$1.18M
$1.18M
Gross churn, trailing 12 mo
4.2%
4.2%
Gross margin
78.4%
78.4%
Cash
$3.90M
$3.90M
Diligence is where deals stall.
A buyer’s analyst rebuilds your ARR from the ledger and gets a number 5% lower than your deck. Now every number you have shown is suspect, the timeline slips, and the price follows.
The fix. Every metric traces back to where it came from. When diligence starts, the answers are already in the data room.
Illustrative data from Demo Co, a fictional $3M ARR SaaS company. The patterns are real.
The right numbers, the moment you need them.
The whole business on one screen. Metrics and finance that agree with each other. Ask why anything moved and get the numbers, the transactions and what your team said about it, with an analyst on the follow-up.
The Perch
Ask about Demo Co…⌘K
Sep 2026Q3YTDSynced 6:02a
Good morning, Maya.
September closed ahead of plan on revenue and a little over on spend. Runway holds at 24 months. Two things need you.
Revenue and customers
ARR$3.06M+3.7% MoM
Net revenue retention104%+2 pts
New MRR$9.8KBest since March
Customers212+4 net
Cash and spend
Cash$3.90M−$162K
Net burn$162K+$2K
Runway24 moSep 2028
Gross margin78.4%Flat
ARR against plan Actual Plan
Needs you2
3 November renewals with no exec contact in 60 daysHubSpot$186K ARR
AWS up 31% with usage flatQuickBooksSince Aug 28
Ryan ErwinYour analyst
Opex is up because two engineers started; that was the plan. The renewals are the real risk. I drafted the outreach in #leadership.
Metrics
Ask about Demo Co…⌘K
Synced 6:02a
OverviewRetentionPipelineSegmentsDefinitions
ARR$3.06M+3.7%
Net new MRR+$9.0KPlan +$7.5K
Net revenue retention104%+2 pts
Gross revenue retention95.8%Trailing 12 months
CAC payback16 moTarget under 18
MRR movements, September $K
Net revenue retention by cohort % of starting revenue
Signed
M0
M3
M6
M9
M12
Q3 2025
100
101
103
104
106
Q4 2025
100
99
102
104
Q1 2026
100
102
103
Q2 2026
100
101
Q3 2026
100
Pattern worth a look
Onboarding call within 7 days of signing: these customers keep 97% of their revenue after a year, against 86% for everyone else. 61 of 212 customers · holds in 4 of 5 cohorts.
It didn’t. 14 of the 19 cancellations were failed card payments that Stripe re-created as new subscriptions. Without them, August churn was $2.4K (1.0% of MRR), in line with the last six months. Of the five real cancellations, three raised price on their last call.
Monthly churn, % of MRR As billing reports it Corrected
Ryan ErwinYour analyst
I moved the 14 re-created subscriptions out of churn in the August package and sent Jon the one Stripe retry setting that stops this for good.
Re-created after a failed cardSame customer, new subscription within 48 hours14Stripe
Real cancellationsClosed-lost in the CRM5HubSpot
Raised price on the last call3 of the 5 accounts3Fathom
We like it, but the jump to the new tier is hard to justify this year.Customer, Ops lead · Renewal call · Aug 12
Fixed in your numbersAugust churn $7.9K → $2.4KGRR, trailing 12 months 91.5% → 95.8%
What if
Ask about Demo Co…⌘K
Synced 6:02a
What if we hire two AEs in January?
Turn moves on and off. Perch reruns the model on your actuals.
Ask Ryan to pressure-test this
Runway24 moToday: 24 mo
ARR in 12 months$4.72MPlan: $4.36M
Net burn in 12 months$166KToday: $162K
Cash in the bank, $K With these moves Current plan
Hiring alone costs about two months of runway. With the price change, runway holds at 24 months and ARR in a year rises to $4.72M.
Monthly package
Ask about Demo Co…⌘K
ShareDownload PDF
September 2026
Ready Oct 79 pages · board deck on Oct 15
Books closedOct 2
Numbers checkedOct 5
Package readyOct 7
Review callFri, Oct 9
Board deckOct 15
Demo Co · September 2026
Ahead on revenue, over on spend, 24 months of runway.
Revenue$251.4K+1.4% vs plan
Net burn$162K+$2K vs August
ARR$3.06M+3.7%
The month in three lines
New MRR of $9.8K was the best month since March; ARR is ahead of plan.
Operating expenses rose $38.6K: two engineers and Datadog’s new pricing.
Three November renewals ($186K ARR) have had no exec contact in 60 days.
Ryan ErwinYour analyst
Get Maya on the three renewals this week, and hold the AE hires until the price change shows up in October bookings. Happy to walk the board through either.
Inside
2P&L against plan$251.4K revenue
3Cash and runway24 months
4ARR bridge+$9.0K MRR
5RetentionNRR 104%
6Customers212 active
7Headcount and hiring31 people
Files
September package.pdf9 pages · 1.2 MB
Model, September close.xlsxActuals through Sep, forecast to 2028
Q3 board deck12 slides · drafting, Oct 15
It shows its receipts
Every answer lists the transactions, records and conversations behind it, linked to the system they came from.
It says how sure it is
What it explained, what it couldn’t, and how big the sample was. No false precision.
Someone’s in it with you
Perch answers in minutes. When the answer needs judgment, your analyst is already on it, in your Slack.
Your data stays yours
Read-only connections, a warehouse for your company alone, and nothing posted anywhere without you.
Sample company · illustrative data
Everything in one place. Current every morning.
Your team keeps QuickBooks, Stripe and HubSpot. We connect them, agree on what every number means, keep it all current overnight, and put it in Perch with a person behind it.
01
Connect
Read-only connections you approve in each tool’s own sign-in. Nothing to install, no passwords shared.
02
Define
One written meaning for every number, so ARR and churn are the same in every meeting and every deck.
03
Keep current
Everything syncs overnight. If a number looks wrong, we fix it before your first meeting, not after the board sees it.
04
Ask
Open Perch or message us in Slack. Answers in minutes, with the receipts, from people who know your business.
Perch has the numbers. Your analyst has your back. The overnight work is software. The judgment, the follow-up and the hard conversations are a person who knows your numbers.
Start with two weeks. Keep what we build.
Every engagement leaves something behind: connections, definitions your team can read, and workflows that keep running. Every plan starts with the Sprint.
Your numbers rebuilt, checked and explained before an investor or buyer asks.
Scoped per dealIncluded on Scale.
Built for SaaS companies between their first million and their first CFO.
You’re a fit if
You run B2B or vertical SaaS, roughly $1M to $20M ARR
You’re seed to Series B, or profitable and bootstrapped
Your stack is QuickBooks or Xero, Stripe, and HubSpot or Salesforce
You have no data team and no time to build one
Especially if, in the next six months
You’re raising, or an investor is asking for SaaS metrics
An acquirer, or a buyer’s analyst, is starting diligence
You’re making your first finance hire
Your spreadsheets stopped scaling and nobody trusts the dashboard
Probably not a fit
Pre-revenue companies that need a bookkeeper first
Tax returns or audit opinions: we work alongside your CPA
Businesses that want the cheapest possible books. Software does that now
Ryan ErwinFounder & Fractional CFO
“Most growing SaaS companies don’t need a $300K CFO. They need their numbers in one place, agreeing with each other, and someone senior to tell them what the numbers mean.”
I’m Ryan Erwin. I started in finance effectiveness in Big4 Advisory, then spent four and a half years leading client delivery for a SaaS analytics firm, building the reporting that boards, investors and buyers actually read.
I run Prinsee on the same workflows I install for clients. That’s how one person can work like a team, and why I’m in your Slack answering questions instead of sending a report and disappearing until next month.
2016 to 2021Big4 AdvisoryAdvisory, Finance Effectiveness (Associate to Manager)
2021 to 2025SaaS analytics firmSenior Manager, Client Delivery
The same job a full-time CFO does, at the depth you need now: a monthly financial package, forecasts and runway, SaaS metrics your board trusts, pricing and hiring decisions, and preparation for a raise or diligence. With Prinsee you also get Perch, your systems in one place and current every morning, and an analyst in your Slack, so the right numbers are there when you need them and someone can tell you why they moved.
How much does a fractional CFO cost?
Prinsee publishes its pricing. Essentials is $1,500 a month, Growth is $3,500 and Scale is $6,500. Every plan starts with the two-week Finance Automation Sprint, $3,500 flat. On Essentials, the Sprint is the setup. Growth and Scale add a one-time setup of $7,500 to $15,000, depending on how many systems and entities we connect, and the Sprint is credited toward it. See what fractional CFOs charge in 2026.
How do Perch and your analyst split the work?
Perch does the overnight work: syncing your systems, checking that the numbers agree, flagging what looks off, and answering your questions in minutes with the sources attached. Your analyst does the rest: the follow-ups, the judgment calls, the board prep and the hard conversations. We work in your Slack like part of your team, not from behind a monthly PDF.
Can Perch read our Slack and call notes?
Only if you connect them, and only the channels and recorded meetings you choose. Perch reads them read-only to find the decisions and context behind a number, such as who approved a spend or what a customer said before they churned. It never posts anything, and you can disconnect at any time.
How is a fractional CFO different from my bookkeeper or accountant?
Your bookkeeper records what happened. Your CPA files what is required. A fractional CFO helps you decide what to do next: whether you can afford the hire, what a price change does to churn, how long the cash lasts. We work alongside your bookkeeper and CPA and do not replace them.
Is our financial data safe?
You authorize each connection yourself, so we never hold your passwords. Connections are read-only wherever the tool allows it. Your data lands in a warehouse project dedicated to your company, access is limited to the people working on your account, and you can revoke any connection at any time.
How fast can we start?
Usually within two weeks of our first call. The Finance Automation Sprint runs two weeks end to end. Plans begin after the Sprint, with your next month-end close.
Your next board meeting is coming either way.
Thirty minutes. Bring your last board deck or your messiest spreadsheet. You’ll leave with three things to fix, whether we work together or not.
