SaaS reporting tracks vital metrics to determine what’s working and what isn’t, turning data into actionable insights. However, with so many Saas reporting metrics to monitor (like user engagement, churn and revenue), it’s easy to lose sight of what truly impacts your business.
Effective reporting lets you focus on what drives your business forward and uncover opportunities for improvement.
In this article, you’ll learn what SaaS reporting is and why it matters. You’ll also get tips for successful reporting and discover which key metrics you should track to gain actionable insights and drive sustainable growth.
Key takeaways about SaaS reporting
SaaS reporting provides a clear view of your business performance by analyzing key metrics to guide data-driven decisions.
The process helps sales teams track KPIs, uncover opportunities and make informed decisions that drive growth.
Without clear reporting, it’s easy to miss trends or opportunities, but standardizing reports and tracking the right metrics turns complex data into actionable insights.
Pipedrive is the ideal solution for SaaS reporting, offering dashboards, automation and forecasting in one platform – start your free 14-day trial today.
What is SaaS reporting?
SaaS reporting analyzes data from your software-as-a-service (SaaS) company to gauge performance, optimize the user experience and refine business strategies.
The process involves tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) like user engagement, customer acquisition costs and churn rate. Monitoring this information lets SaaS businesses identify trends, measure growth and optimize software features.
How SaaS reporting drives business success
SaaS reporting answers questions about your business’s performance, helping you identify growth opportunities and make data-driven decisions that boost revenue.
Here are some of the top benefits of a strong SaaS reporting strategy:
Improve decision-making. Reporting on data about customer behavior and sales trends in a straightforward format to help you make data-driven decisions.
Track performance more accurately. Real-time performance tracking through KPIs and sales metrics lets you monitor critical areas like revenue growth, conversion rates and lifetime value (LTV), ensuring you stay on track.
Boost operational efficiency. Streamline processes and increase productivity by analyzing workflows to help you find bottlenecks and areas for improvement.
Find more growth opportunities. Get strategic insights into market dynamics, helping you find growth opportunities. Companies that use data-driven insights have a strategic edge over those that rely on intuition.
Predict seasonal trends. Analyze historical data to find future trends, so you can accurately forecast sales.
Optimize new strategies. Access to detailed reports lets you test and optimize new approaches in real time, finding the most effective strategies to boost sales.
3 tips for effective SaaS reporting
To get the most out of your SaaS reporting strategy, define your objectives, standardize reporting and track the right metrics.
1. Define your objectives
Understanding your goals helps you focus data collection and analysis on the most relevant insights.
The first step in effective SaaS reporting is defining clear objectives. Some helpful questions to ask yourself include:
What business goals are you trying to achieve? Are you aiming to increase revenue, improve customer retention or enhance operational efficiency?
Are you tracking the entire business or a particular team? Which departments or teams have the highest impact on your sales objectives? Are there specific teams that could benefit from increased focus and insights?
What time frame are you focusing on? Are you more interested in short-term adjustments or long-term strategic planning? How far back do you need to go to spot meaningful trends? Do you have goals that rely on understanding historical data?
Are you addressing specific challenges or opportunities? What challenges (like declining sales) are you trying to tackle? Are there emerging opportunities (like new customer segments) that you want to explore?
The answers to these questions serve as a roadmap for defining the scope and direction of your SaaS reporting data.
Once you know your goal, create a list of specific objectives that align with it. Here are three examples:
Improve customer retention and renewals. Analyze data to find factors contributing to churn and opportunities to improve customer loyalty.
Enhance product features. Gather usage statistics to inform product development and prioritize functionality improvements.
Increase revenue growth. Track sales metrics and customer acquisition costs to find opportunities for upselling or cross-selling.
Clear objectives keep your SaaS reporting focused and actionable, ensuring every metric you track directly supports smarter decisions and measurable business outcomes.
2. Standardize how you create and share reports
Standardizing SaaS reporting ensures insights are clear, comparable and actionable across the business.
Start by defining a consistent template for every report. For example, include the same time period, clear metric definitions, benchmarks and a short written summary explaining what changed and why it matters.
Here are some other tips for standardizing reports:
Define metric ownership. Decide who is responsible for each report and metric to avoid duplication or things falling through the cracks.
Use consistent definitions. Ensure everyone agrees on what metrics like churn or active users mean to avoid conflicting interpretations.
Set a reporting cadence. Align reports to weekly, monthly or quarterly reviews so teams know when to expect updates and can act quickly.
Highlight insights, not just numbers. Add short commentary that explains trends, risks and next steps rather than presenting raw data alone.
A standardized reporting process turns SaaS metrics into shared understanding, helping teams move faster and make better decisions based on the same facts.
3. Track the right metrics
Knowing what you want to learn from your performance helps you identify the right metrics to track.
Each goal needs specific metrics to provide data-driven insights for informed decision-making.
For example, are you trying to:
Improve customer relationships? Consider measuring your customer satisfaction score and Net Promoter Score (more on this later).
Increase revenue growth? Consider monthly recurring revenue and customer lifetime value.
Enhance your products? Track feature adoption rates and customer engagement metrics to inform future product development.
Optimize marketing strategies? Focus on conversion rates and cost per acquisition.
Improve sales performance? Track metrics like sales conversion rate and lead-to-opportunity ratio.
We explain these metrics and how to use them in more detail below.
Best tools for SaaS reporting
SaaS reporting software helps you turn raw data into clear insights. Below are the core types of SaaS reporting tools and how they support better visibility across teams, along with specific examples of each.
Business intelligence (BI) software | What it is: Software that collects, processes and analyzes data from multiple sources to support better business decision-making. How to use it: Analyze large data sets and provide actionable insights for BI reporting. Examples: Tableau, Power BI, Looker Studio |
Data visualization tools | What it is: Tools that organize and present data, making trends, patterns and performance easier to understand. How to use it: Convert complex data sources into easy-to-read formats like graphs and charts. Examples: Pipedrive, Google Data Studio, Domo |
Customer analytics tools | What it is: Platforms that analyze customer data to show how customers behave, interact and move through the sales funnel. How to use it: Analyze customer data, providing insight into user behavior, preferences and engagement patterns. Examples: Pipedrive, Mixpanel, Amplitude |
Financial analytics tools | What it is: Software that analyzes financial data to highlight business performance, profitability and financial health. How to use it: Provide detailed financial reporting, helping you track revenue, expenses and KPIs. Examples: QuickBooks, Sage Intacct, Xero |
Marketing analytics tools | What it is: Tools that track, analyze and report on marketing activity to show what drives traffic, leads and conversions How to use it: Measure and optimize marketing performance across channels. Examples: Pipedrive, Google Analytics, Marketo |
Product analytics platform | What it is: Software that tracks how users interact with a product, revealing usage patterns, friction points and feature adoption How to use it: Track and analyze product use, helping you develop and optimize your offerings. Examples: Pendo, Heap, FullStory |
The best SaaS reporting solutions depend on your business model, team structure and the decisions you need to make.
For example, if you need clear visibility into your sales pipeline, customer activity and revenue forecasting in one place, Pipedrive is an ideal solution. The software combines CRM data with built-in reporting and dashboards designed for sales-led teams.
Pipedrive in action: Marketing agency, CreativeRace, used Pipedrive’s pipeline management and insights features to centralize lead data, prioritize high-intent prospects and spot drop-offs.
More accurate reporting has helped them create more targeted lead lists, resulting in the company achieving a 600% increase in client acquisition year-on-year and a 42% faster lead-to-opportunity conversion rate.
How to use Pipedrive for B2B SaaS reporting
Pipedrive is a powerful customer relationship management (CRM) tool that SaaS companies can use to gain insight into sales performance and customer interactions.
Instead of using Excel spreadsheets to manually store and organize data, SaaS companies turn to Pipedrive to centralize customer data for easy analysis.
Here’s how to use Pipedrive for SaaS reporting:
View metrics with customizable dashboards
Dashboards give SaaS teams a clear view of KPIs, helping them monitor sales, revenue and customer engagement without sifting through raw data.
Build fully customizable dashboards with visual reports and widgets. Display metrics like monthly recurring revenue, deal value or win rates in charts and graphs.
Simply select the KPIs you want to track and arrange them on your dashboard and Pipedrive automatically updates the data in real time. You can also tailor dashboards for specific roles, such as sales reps, managers or executives.
Here’s an example of a dashboard in Pipedrive:
This display gives you a high-level overview of your business’s health, allowing you to make fast and informed decisions to improve your bottom line.
Track deal progress with sales pipeline management
SaaS companies often have multi-stage sales processes and tracking deals through every stage helps identify bottlenecks, forecast revenue and improve pipeline efficiency.
Pipedrive’s visual pipeline maps every deal from lead to close. You can customize stages to match your SaaS sales process, whether it’s trial sign-ups, product demos or contract negotiation.
The image below shows a custom sales pipeline in Pipedrive’s interface:
This visibility highlights where deals stall and where to focus resources for the best results.
Download our sales pipeline course e-book
Generate real-time reports
Real-time reporting allows SaaS teams to respond quickly to changes, measure performance against targets and make proactive decisions.
Pipedrive generates custom reports on sales performance, deal velocity and conversion rates. They provide historical and real-time insights, enabling data-driven decision-making and strategic planning.
Here’s an example of a sales performance report in Pipedrive:
You can also filter reports by time periods, deal owners or pipeline stages based on the information you want to view.
Speed up reporting with workflow automation
Automating repetitive tasks saves time and reduces errors, letting teams focus on strategic work and effective reporting.
Pipedrive’s workflow automation triggers actions such as lead scoring, deal updates, email notifications and task assignments. The automations allow your team to increase productivity by focusing on high-value activities.
Here is one of the existing automation sequences in Pipedrive’s CRM (but you can also create your own):
This automation also ensures data stays accurate and reporting reflects real-time activity.
Track activities to understand customer behavior
Understanding customer interactions helps SaaS companies identify engagement patterns, uncover upsell opportunities and reduce churn.
Pipedrive logs all communication (including calls, emails, meetings and subscriber notes) in one place, associating each activity with the relevant contact or deal.
Here’s how these activities appear in Pipedrive:
Every interaction automatically updates the customer profile, giving sales and customer success teams a detailed timeline of engagement to inform follow-ups and strategy.
Attribute leads and track lead sources
Knowing which channels bring in high-quality leads lets SaaS companies optimize marketing spend and focus on the most effective campaigns.
Use Pipedrive’s lead-tracking to analyze which sources attract the best leads. Pipedrive assigns these leads to the pipeline automatically, whether they come from ads, referrals, webinars or organic search.
The image below shows Pipedrive’s lead sources in the “Labels” column:
This insight helps teams focus on the most profitable acquisition strategies.
Forecast sales for better planning
Accurate sales forecasting supports revenue planning, resource allocation and growth strategy for SaaS businesses.
Pipedrive’s sales forecasting predicts future sales based on current pipeline data and historical trends, helping you anticipate revenue and plan accordingly.
With this insight, managers can adjust sales targets or budgets with confidence, reducing surprises and missed goals.
Analyze CRM data with third-party tools
SaaS companies often need a holistic view across sales, marketing, product and support systems to gain a complete understanding of business performance.
Integrate Pipedrive with SaaS analytics, marketing automation and customer support tools through its Marketplace. Connecting Pipedrive with these tools allows you to create a unified ecosystem, gaining a complete view of customer interactions and business performance.
Here are some of the tools that integrate with Pipedrive:
Use these combined insights to generate deeper reports, track performance across the customer lifecycle and make informed strategic decisions.
10 key SaaS metrics to track
Tracking the right SaaS metrics gives you clear visibility into growth, revenue health, customer retention and where to focus your efforts for the best results.
Here are the most important metrics for SaaS:
1. Average revenue per user (ARPU) | What it is: The average amount of revenue generated per customer over a specific period. Why it’s important: Shows how effectively you’re monetizing your customer base and highlights upsell or pricing opportunities. How to track it: Divide total revenue by the number of active customers in your CRM or billing tool. Example: $50,000 in monthly revenue ÷ 1,000 customers = $50 ARPU. |
2. Churn rate | What it is: The percentage of customers who cancel or stop using your product in a given period. Why it’s important: High churn signals retention issues that directly impact growth and long-term revenue. How to track it: Track lost customers over a period and divide by the total customers at the start of that period. Example: 50 customers lost out of 1,000 = 5% monthly churn. |
3. Cost per acquisition (CPA) or customer acquisition cost (CAC) | What it is: The total cost of acquiring a new customer through sales and marketing. Why it’s important: Shows whether your growth strategy is sustainable and cost-efficient. How to track it: Divide total sales and marketing spend by the number of new customers acquired. Example: $20,000 spent to acquire 200 customers = $100 CAC. |
4. Customer engagement score (CES) | What it is: A composite score that measures how actively customers interact with your business. Why it’s important: Engagement score is a leading indicator of retention, expansion and churn risk. How to track it: Combine usage data such as logins, feature use and session frequency from analytics tools. Example: A customer who logs in daily and uses core features scores higher than an occasional user. |
5. Customer lifetime value (CLV) | What it is: The total revenue you predict a customer to generate over their entire relationship with your business. Why it’s important: Helps you understand how much you can spend to acquire and retain customers profitably. How to track it: Multiply ARPU by average customer lifespan. Example: $50 ARPU × 24 months = $1,200 CLV. |
6. Customer satisfaction score (CSAT) and net promoter score (NPS) | What it is: Survey-based metrics that measure customer satisfaction (CSAT) and loyalty or advocacy (NPS). Why it’s important: Provides direct insight into customer sentiment and predicts retention and referrals. How to track it: Send surveys and analyze responses in your CRM or survey platform. Example: CSAT of 90% or an NPS of +40 indicates strong customer satisfaction. |
7. Feature adoption rate | What it is: The percentage of users actively using a specific product feature. Why it’s important: It shows whether features deliver value and support customer success. How to track it: Monitor feature usage in product analytics tools. Example: 300 out of 1,000 users using a new feature = 30% adoption. |
8. Lead source | What it is: The channel or campaign where a lead first discovers your business. Why it’s important: Shows which channels generate the most valuable leads. How to track it: Capture source data automatically in your CRM. Example: Organic search, paid ads, referrals or webinars. |
9. Lead-to-opportunity ratio | What it is: The percentage of leads that convert into qualified sales opportunities. Why it’s important: Reflects lead quality and sales effectiveness. How to track it: Divide the number of opportunities by total leads in your CRM. Example: 100 opportunities from 1,000 leads = 10% conversion rate. |
10. Monthly recurring revenue (MRR) and annual recurring revenue (ARR) | What it is: Predictable subscription revenue generated monthly (MRR) or annually (ARR). Why it’s important: Shows revenue stability and growth potential. How to track it: Sum the value of active subscriptions in your billing or CRM system. Example: $10,000 MRR equals $120,000 ARR. |
Ultimately, the right SaaS metrics to track will depend on your business model, target audience, growth stage and goals. Focus on the numbers that directly reflect how customers find you, use your product and generate long-term value for your business.
Final thoughts
Tracking the right metrics in the fast-paced SaaS landscape is vital for profitability and growth. It’s easy to lose yourself in day-to-day tasks, but SaaS reporting provides the clarity needed for strategic success.
Pipedrive combines CRM data with powerful reporting, interactive dashboards and automation designed for SaaS teams. From tracking key metrics to forecasting revenue and analyzing customer behavior, the software gives you a complete view of your business in one place.
Ready to enhance your SaaS reporting? Start your free 14-day trial with Pipedrive today and transform how you track crucial SaaS metrics.
