When you’re starting out as a freelancer or just getting going on your own services business, there’s a lot of SaaS jargon and acronyms you will learn over time that helps you to be a better business owner. But, instead of making you wait to make mistakes so you can learn what you need to know, we figured we’d tell you what we learned instead!

At Mayven, as we discussed in this post, we bill a combination of hourly, per project, or retainer. So that’s how you bill clients, but what about your GPM, LTV, or Burn Rate for your agency? To get you going with all of these abbreviations, we listed below some common SaaS acronyms to help you out. Here are a few terms that might help you level up your agency business:

 

  • GPM: Gross Profit margin
  • LTV: Lifetime Value (the total (or average) amount a customer will spend over time on your product)
  • CR: Churn rate (shows the rate at which the clients/customers are canceling/not renewing their subscriptions during a time period)
  • BR: Burn Rate (the monthly rate at which a new service provider spends its (venture) capital before turning profitable)
  • OOO: Out of office
  • PTO: paid time off
  • TL;DR: Too long, didn’t read
  • TLTR: Too long to read
  • WFH: Work from home
  • USP: unique selling proposition
  • FTE: Full-time employee
  • OTP: On the phone
  • NRN: No reply necessary
  • Net 30 Payment Terms: It indicates when the vendor wants to be paid for the service or product provided. In this case, net 30 means the vendor wants to be paid within 30 full days of the invoice date.
  • Cash Flow: It gives a snapshot of the amount of cash coming into the business, from where, and the amount flowing out.
  • Accounts Receivable: it’s the balance of money due to your firm (not paid yet) for goods or services you delivered to your customers.
  • Pipeline: It’s a set of data processing elements connected in series. 
  • Close Rate: It measures how many deals you won, divided by the total number of deals closed, won, or lost.
  • Quota: A quota is a government-imposed trade restriction that limits the number or monetary value of goods that a country can import or export during a particular period.
  • Revenue vs. Cash Collected: Revenue is the money a company earns from the sale of its products and services. Cash flow is the net amount of cash being transferred into and out of a company. Revenue provides a measure of the effectiveness of a company’s sales and marketing, whereas cash flow is more of a liquidity indicator.