SaaS Metrics School

Ben Murray
  • 4.6 (11)
  • Management
  • Updated Weekly

Ben Murray brings you actionable SaaS metrics lessons that he has learned through years of being in the SaaS CFO trenches. Whether you are new to SaaS or a SaaS veteran, learn the latest SaaS and AI metrics, finance, and accounting tactics that drive financial transparency and improved decision-making. Ben’s SaaS metrics blog consistently rates a 70+ NPS, and his templates have been downloaded over 100,000 times. There is always something to learn about SaaS and AI metrics.

  1. 2d ago

    Your AI Subscription Pricing Is Losing Money on the Customers You Care About Most

    Do you actually know which of your AI customers are making you money and which are quietly destroying your gross margin? In episode #375, Ben Murray breaks down the shape of AI usage and why the distribution curve of your customers determines whether your AI subscription product is profitable. This is why Anthropic and GitHub changed their pricing. Heavy users on a flat subscription can quietly turn a 40% gross margin into a negative one, and most finance teams are not tracking token usage by customer in enough detail to see it coming. The three AI usage distribution scenarios every SaaS CFO needs to model: normal, right skew, and left skew, and what each does to your gross margin Why a right-skewed distribution means your light users are subsidizing your heavy users, and how to spot when that subsidy stops working How a left-skewed distribution can leave 80% of customers unprofitable and drag overall gross margin into the negatives Why median, mean, and P90 token usage by customer are now core SaaS finance metrics, not just product analytics What finance needs from product and engineering — usage by customer, model mix, input and output token pricing — to run real pricing scenario analysis Tune in before your next pricing review and find out where your AI margin is actually leaking. Resources Mentioned Ben's AI metrics course with the usage distribution template and free preview: https://www.thesaasacademy.com/ai-finance-metrics-saas AI readiness quiz: https://www.thesaasacademy.com/ai-finance-metrics-saas

    5 min

  2. 4d ago

    4 SaaS P&L Metrics That Break When You Kill Per-Seat Pricing

    The pricing model that built the SaaS industry is being replaced in real time. Is your finance team ready for what it does to your core metrics? In episode #374, Ben Murray breaks down the four SaaS P&L metrics that break when per-seat pricing dies. Public tech leaders are already shifting fast. ServiceNow now drives 50% of net new business from non-seat-based pricing, Workday is reporting hundreds of millions in AI ARR, and GitHub is moving Copilot to usage-based billing. If you are a SaaS CFO or finance leader still modeling on a single blended gross margin, your benchmarks are about to stop working. Why the AI product gross margin sits around 52% and how a 30% revenue mix shift can compress your blended margin by 10 to 15 points How AI COGS scale directly with product usage, breaking the near-zero incremental cost assumption traditional SaaS finance was built on Why one blended LTV no longer works once you have heavy, medium, and light AI usage cohorts, and how to rebuild LTV to CAC by cohort How CAC payback period shifts when gross margin is no longer a single number across the customer base The new frameworks finance teams need to model hybrid subscription plus usage and outcome-based pricing before the board notices the margin compression Tune in to get ahead of the pricing shift before your next forecast and board deck go out. Resources Mentioned Ben's blog post on the SaaS pricing revolution: https://www.thesaascfo.com/saas-per-seat-pricing/ Ben's AI course for SaaS finance leaders: https://www.thesaasacademy.com/ai-finance-metrics-saas

    5 min

  3. 6d ago

    Per-Seat Pricing Is Dying: What the Shift to Usage-Based SaaS Means for Your Margins

    Is per-seat pricing dying a slow death, and is your SaaS expense structure ready for its replacement? In episode #373, Ben Murray breaks down the shift from per-seat subscriptions to usage and outcome-based pricing, and what it means for your finance org. Bloomberg projects subscription pricing falling from 60% to 30% of SaaS models over the next decade, while outcome-based pricing climbs from 10% to 60%. This is no longer a thesis on a slide. GitHub, Salesforce, Zendesk, Intercom, Figma, HubSpot, and others are already repricing, and public companies are reporting AI ARR in the hundreds of millions. If you cannot answer what your AI margins are when the board asks, you are already behind. See exactly how legacy SaaS leaders are repricing, from Zendesk charging per automated resolution to Salesforce billing per AI conversation plus flex credits, and what GitHub's June 1 move to token-based billing signals for the rest of the market. Understand why a single bucket of cloud hosting that blends traditional infrastructure with inference spend leaves you blind, and what instrumentation to put in place before budget season. Learn the questions your board will ask about AI margins, and how to answer whether low-usage customers are quietly subsidizing your heaviest users. Get the case for reconvening your pricing committee now to align product roadmap, AI features, and the expense framework that tracks them. Know which AI unit economics to track by revenue stream and by usage bucket so you can defend margin as your pricing model changes in real time. Listen now and put the tracking framework in place before the AI margin questions land on your desk. Resources Mentioned Ben's blog post: https://www.thesaascfo.com/saas-per-seat-pricing/ New course on AI unit economics and metrics: https://www.thesaasacademy.com/ai-finance-metrics-saas

    5 min

  4. May 20

    The Two SaaStr Annual Slides Every SaaS Operator Needs to See Today

    Are you a legacy SaaS company quietly hoping for a recovery that isn't coming? In episode #372, Ben Murray breaks down two slides from Jason Lemkin's State of SaaS keynote at SaaStr Annual that every SaaS operator and CFO needs to confront. The four categories Lemkin laid out will tell you exactly where your company sits in the AI transition, and whether your ARR growth is real or borrowed time. If you're building, leading, or financing a SaaS business right now, this is the reality check that should reshape how you frame your strategy for the next board meeting. Understand the four SaaS+AI categories Jason Lemkin used to map every software company, and which one quietly signals the end of the road Learn why AI driving expansion revenue versus net new customer acquisition matters more than top-line ARR growth right now See which public SaaS companies are pulling off the AI-powered rocket ship growth and what they share Hear the "tired versus wired" narratives that separate operators stuck in 2024 talking points from those building what's next Get a clear lens for whether your AI features are real revenue drivers or just a story you're telling investors Tune in to find out where your company actually sits before the next board meeting forces the question. Resources Mentioned SaaStr Annual / Jason Lemkin: https://saastrannual.com/ Ben's new AI metrics course: https://www.thesaasacademy.com/ai-finance-metrics-saas

    3 min

  5. May 10

    2 AI Metrics Every SaaS CFO Should Track Today

    If you're shipping AI product lines, are you measuring the two metrics that actually tell you whether your AI is making money — or burning it? In episode #371, Ben Murray covers two AI unit economics metrics every SaaS CFO and founder should be tracking today: the Inference Expense Ratio and the Work-to-Inference Ratio. Traditional SaaS metrics aren't enough anymore — and a year from now, when your board, investors, and potential acquirers start asking for AI margin and efficiency data, the companies that built the chart-of-accounts structure now will have clean answers. Everyone else will be scrambling. The Inference Expense Ratio (AI revenue ÷ inference cost) — and why you can start calculating this from your GL today if your chart of accounts is set up properly The healthy benchmarks: 10:1 for AI-infused products, 5:1 for AI-native, and why 3:1 is the warning zone where inference is silently eating your gross margin Why this metric only works if your chart of accounts cleanly separates AI revenue from non-AI revenue — and the SKU tagging that makes it possible The Work-to-Inference Ratio — how Salesforce's "agentic work units" concept lets you measure whether your AI is getting more efficient over time Why every AI product needs its own definition of a "work unit" — record updated, report generated, MCP called — and how the wrong definition will distort your margin trends The chart-of-accounts evolution every SaaS company needs right now: from SaaS-only structure to SaaS + AI, with new GL accounts for inference cost in DevOps COGS How the Inference Expense Ratio connects to Ben's ROSE metric — measuring revenue produced per dollar of employee, contractor, and agentic AI spend Tune in to get the AI unit economics framework in place — before your board and investors start asking the questions you can't answer. Resources Mentioned Ben's new AI course: https://www.thesaasacademy.com/ai-finance-metrics-saas ROSE metric: https://www.thesaascfo.com/saas-rose-metric/

    4 min

  6. May 9

    What Belongs in AI COGS? The Financial Framework SaaS Companies Are Scrambling to Build

    Are AI inference costs already eating into your gross margin — and you can't even see them on your P&L? In episode #370, Ben Murray breaks down exactly what belongs in AI COGS for SaaS companies offering an AI-first or AI-infused product line. Inference bills are stacking up fast, infrastructure-layer spend is the surprise line item nobody priced in, and most finance teams haven't built the GL account structure to capture any of it cleanly. If you don't get the framework in place now, you'll be reporting AI gross margin you can't actually defend by next quarter — and your board will notice. The 5 cost categories every AI COGS framework needs — inference, model hosting/GPU infrastructure, the AI infrastructure layer, monitoring and observability, and AI-specific support Why AI inference costs deserve their own GL account — and shouldn't be buried inside your cloud hosting bill where they disappear The surprise cost line one industry report flagged as the #1 unexpected AI expense — hiding in data platform usage, networking, and egress How to structure your COGS cost centers so you can deliver clean margins by AI product line, not just lumped together at the company level Why token tracking by customer cohort (heavy / medium / light users) is now table stakes for any AI product sold as a subscription The deployed-engineer question: should AI support tickets sit with tech support or a specialized team — and how that decision rewires your margin model Tune in to get the AI COGS framework in place before your gross margin lands on a board slide you can't defend. Resources Mentioned Ben's new AI course: https://www.thesaasacademy.com/ai-finance-metrics-saas Ben's blog post: What Should Be Included in AI COGS: https://www.thesaascfo.com/what-should-be-included-in-ai-cogs/ SaaS Metrics Foundation course: https://www.thesaasacademy.com/the-saas-metrics-foundation

    4 min

  7. May 8

    How Claude Opus 4.7's New Tokenizer Quietly Raised Your AI Bill by Up to 35%

    Did your AI bill just jump overnight — even though no one announced a price increase? In episode #369, Ben Murray breaks down the hidden AI price hike that's quietly hitting SaaS P&Ls this month. Anthropic shipped a new tokenizer underneath Claude Opus 4.7 — same menu pricing as 4.6, but real enterprise workloads are showing 12-27% higher effective cost, with some prompts consuming up to 35% more tokens for identical output. Most finance teams won't catch this variance until the invoice lands. If you're running AI in production, paying for Claude Code, or modeling AI COGS into next year's plan, this is the cost dynamic you need on your radar before the next board meeting. Why "same per-token pricing" doesn't mean same cost — and how a new tokenizer can quietly inflate your token consumption by 35% The real-world math: how a $50K/month API spend can balloon to $67K with zero changes to the pricing page What Anthropic's doubled Claude Code per-developer estimate ($6 → $13/day) signals about the end of subsidized AI pricing Why the era of "AI is just going to keep getting cheaper" assumptions is breaking down — and what that means for forecasting and runway The exact metrics to monitor in your Anthropic console today to catch token volume spikes before they hit your GL How to use the Inference Efficiency Ratio (revenue ÷ token costs in COGS) to measure AI margin if you're embedding AI into your product Why finance teams now need to document internal-use AI models the same way they document internal-use software Tune in before your next Anthropic invoice lands — and learn what to track now so AI variance doesn't become a board question. Resources Mentioned Dev.to article: https://dev.to/dev_tips/the-ai-price-hike-that-never-showed-up-on-the-pricing-page-your-bill-went-up-27-anyway-3mn5 Put your AI framework in place: https://www.thesaasacademy.com/ai-finance-metrics-saas

    4 min

  8. May 1

    Why Token Usage Tells You Almost Nothing About Your AI Product's Real Value

    Can you actually prove what your AI product is doing for customers — or are you still pointing at token counts and hoping the board nods along? In episode #368, Ben Murray breaks down the four layers of AI measurement that every SaaS company needs to communicate internally and externally. Token usage is table stakes. The real question is whether you can move up the stack from consumption to work performed to verified outcomes to quantifiable P&L impact. Get this wrong, and your AI story falls apart in front of investors, customers, and your own finance team. Get it right, and you finally have ROI math a CFO will actually approve. Why AI inference belongs in COGS / DevOps — and what that means for the gross margin story behind your AI features and product lines How Salesforce's "agentic work units" framing on its latest earnings call signals where AI reporting is heading for the rest of SaaS Where true outcome-based pricing actually lives on the pricing page (HubSpot, Zendesk, and others) — and where Agentforce was really still usage-based in disguise How Layer 4 business impact replaces fuzzy ROI calculators with objective math What to show your board and investors at each layer so your AI value story holds up under scrutiny Tune in before your next board meeting — your AI story needs more than token counts. Resources Mentioned Ben's blog post on AI measurement and AI work units: https://www.thesaascfo.com/the-four-layers-of-ai-measurement-a-cfos-framework/ Ben's academy: https://www.thesaasacademy.com/

    5 min
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4.6
out of 5
11 Ratings

About

Ben Murray brings you actionable SaaS metrics lessons that he has learned through years of being in the SaaS CFO trenches. Whether you are new to SaaS or a SaaS veteran, learn the latest SaaS and AI metrics, finance, and accounting tactics that drive financial transparency and improved decision-making. Ben’s SaaS metrics blog consistently rates a 70+ NPS, and his templates have been downloaded over 100,000 times. There is always something to learn about SaaS and AI metrics.

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