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Burn Multiple

Burn Multiple is a measure of capital efficiency, comparing how much ARR a company adds in a period to how much cash was burned.

Burn Multiple = Burn÷Net New ARRX-1

While Burn Multiple is calculated using burn by default, if SaaSGrid does not have cash balance figures, Burn Multiple will be calculated using net income. You can also toggle to using net income in settings, which can be helpful in analyzing business efficiency excluding cash flow cycles.

Net Income = RevenueAll Expenses

If a company increases its cash (when burn is used) or is profitable (when net income is used) in a period, the Burn Multiple will be negative, and as such will not appear in Charts and Reports. If ARR does not increase in a period, a value for Burn Multiple will not be returned.

Burn Multiple is a great catch-all efficiency metric because it shows the inputs and outputs of the entire business: how much did ARR grow, and how much money did you have to spend to do it? The best thing about Burn Multiple is that it can't be calculated incorrectly by misclassifying expenses, which can be a tricky exercise. A company can simply look at how much their bank account changed in a period, and compare that number to how their ARR changed. Burn Multiple is inevitably high early in a company's life cycle: a built out engineering team with 1 to 2 sales reps will likely consume much more cash than they add in ARR. However, as companies mature they can aim to consume cash at the same rate they add ARR, hopefully at a ratio of 1:1.

Benchmarks

Good: <2

Great: <1.5

Excellent: <1

Settings: Segments, Date Range, Date Aggregation, Revenue Type, Trailing Period, Expense Segments

Stage Conversion Rate

Stage Conversion Rate is the While Pipeline Value sums the total ARR of active opportunities in pipeline, weighted pipeline is weighted based on the current deal stage. Weighted pipeline value is a more accurate estimate of Closed Won ARR based on the current pipeline value.

How do I calculate pipeline?

Let's assume we have the following list of opportunities currently active in our sales process:

Deal Name

Sales Owner

Stage

ARR

ACME Corp. - New Business
Bugs Bunny
Stage 1
$10,000
Bonner Books - Upsell
Bugs Bunny
Stage 2
$25,000
CHOAM - New Business
Daffy Duck
Stage 2
$15,000
Daedalus Research - Upsell
Daffy Duck
Stage 3
$30,000
Bugs Bunny
Electric Enterprise - New Business
Stage 3
$50,000
$20,000
Fabulous Factories - New Business
Daffy Duck
Closed Lost

The total pipeline for these opportunities is $130,000. Additionally, we can also get pipeline totals for our two sales reps: Bugs Bunny ($85,000) and Daffy Duck ($45,000).

Note that Fabulous Factories - New Business is omitted from this sum, as the stage is marked as "Closed Lost".

We can summarize our pipeline by Stage to understand how much ARR is in each step of the sales process. To summarize the Pipeline ARR by Stage, we generate the following ARR table:

Stage 1 Pipeline

Stage 2 Pipeline

Stage 3 Pipeline

Total Pipeline

$10,000
$40,000
$80,000
$130,000

While we have the total pipeline value here, we can apply the weightings to more accurately estimate how much of the pipeline ARR will be Closed Won.

What is probability to close?

Probability to Close is a percentage that estimates how much of the ARR that is in a particular stage of a pipeline is expected to be Closed Won. Typically, Probability to Close will be lower in earlier stages of the sales process and higher in later stages of the sales process.

If we multiply the probability to close by the Pipeline ARR, we'll get the Weighted Pipeline ARR value in each stage.

Stage 1

Stage 2

Stage 3

Pipeline ARR ($)

$10,000

$40,000
$80,000

Probability to Close (%)

25%
40%
65%
$2,500
$16,000
$52,000

Weighted Pipeline ARR ($)

Probability to Close assumptions for each stage assume that deals in different stages have a different chance of being won. Deals in Stage 1 are 25% likely to be won, while deals in Stage 2 are 40% likely to be won, and deals in Stage 3 are 65% likely to be won.

After applying the probability to close to the Pipeline ARR, we now have $2,500 in Stage 1, $16,000 in Stage 2, and $52,000 in stage 3, for a total weighted pipeline value of $70,500. This estimate is closer to the real value we expect to have in Closed Won ARR.