Subscription Upgrades and Downgrades: A Deep Dive into B2C vs. SaaS Reporting - Issue 223
A Practical Guide to Reporting Subscription Movements - How to Build Accurate Subscription KPIs
Hello analysts, I have a “fun” topic for you today (one that might be among my least favorites) - managing subscription upgrades and downgrades data!
This is most relevant for B2B SaaS and B2C Subscription businesses that offer multiple subscription plans:
Preparing data and metrics for B2C subscription reporting is very different from B2B SaaS. Many analysts (and PMs, and CFOs) are unaware of the nuances of subscription reporting and simply borrow methods from SaaS into B2C.
It sounds simple: if a user cancels Plan A and starts Plan B within x days, define it as an Upgrade (or Downgrade)
Well, not so fast.
Below, I will share common mistakes, caveats, and nuances of subscription reporting and guide you through different methods for setting up analytics to report upgrade and downgrade subscription KPIs. Hopefully, this will help you avoid my mistakes when setting up such reporting (and then rebuilding it. More than once). Do it right, and do it right early, before too many reports, ML models, or data models are tied to your tables.
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