The read your board trusts,
and you run on.
An independent read of your numbers, signed by an analyst and built from your own records.
Who it is for
Plumbline is for the founder or CFO who wants an independent, expert read of the business: one precise enough to steer the company by, and clear enough to put in front of the board. The same read does both jobs. You act on it inside the company, and you forward it unchanged alongside your own update, a second, senior pair of eyes on the same numbers, whose only job is to get them right. If you sell B2B SaaS, sit between $2M and $10M ARR, and answer to investors who ask hard questions, it is built for you. If it isn't, I'll tell you, and point you to what is.
What you get
Two halves: the record, and the read.
Your dashboard already reports the numbers. Plumbline rebuilds them independently from your raw records, checks whether they hold, and reads what they really mean: the record pulled apart so you can see what moved, and the read itself, signed.
The numbers, decomposed.
An ARR bridge that separates new, expansion, contraction, and churn. Observed CAC payback per cohort. Cohort value to date. Dollar and logo retention, read by cohort. Customer concentration. Runway at your current burn. P&L against the targets you set.
- ARR bridge
- CAC payback (observed)
- Cohort value
- NDR · GRR
- Logo retention
- Concentration
- Runway
- P&L vs targets
What the numbers mean.
One principal finding, with the trajectory underneath it and the deep dives the signal justifies. Signed, so the read comes from a person who has made the call and put their name to it.
- Principal finding
- Trajectory
- Signal-led deep dives
- Peer context
- Analyst signature
What it looks like
A page from the report.
Not a dashboard you log into. A signed document you forward: the finding first, the cohorts it rests on underneath, and the calls a dashboard does not make.
Acquisition cost climbed all year, from about $5,700 a logo to nearly $11,000 by Q3. The cohorts old enough to read paid back in a tight six-to-eight-month band; the three 2026 cohorts that carry the higher cost have not been observed long enough to cross. Whether the costlier acquisition still pays back is not yet in the record, and this report says so rather than projecting it.
| Cohort | CAC / logo | Payback (observed) |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 · Q3 | $5,633 | 6.3 mo |
| 2025 · Q4 | $6,784 | 6.8 mo |
| 2026 · Q1 | $8,475 | not yet crossed |
| 2026 · Q2 | $9,908 | not yet crossed |
| 2026 · Q3 | $10,832 | not yet crossed |
Each payback is the month that cohort's accumulated gross profit crossed its CAC, read off its own curve. Left blank where the cohort is too young to have crossed.
R. Fernandes
A page from Sample Co., a fictional company. Your report carries your numbers, your name, and the same signature.
How the numbers are built
Built to stay true.
CAC is rebuilt fully loaded from the cost ledger and attributed to acquisition in the period it was spent. Retention and expansion are read by cohort and weighted by dollars, so you can see how each group of customers behaves over time. Payback comes straight off each cohort's own curve: the month its accumulated gross profit crosses what that cohort cost to acquire.
Everything reconciles to your own conventions and to the numbers your platform already reports, so the report and your tools tell one story. And because every figure rests on what the data shows, it still reads true a year later, when someone opens the file again.
How it works
From your records to one read, for you and the board.
You send the records.
Transactions, acquisition costs, cash, and P&L, exported in whatever formats you already keep. Your data stays yours: used only to produce your report, never shared, never used to train anything, and removed on request.
Plumbline reconciles them.
To your own conventions, and to what your dashboard or ChartMogul already shows, so the report and your tools agree on the same numbers. Every figure is recomputed from the raw data before it ships.
You get the read.
A board-grade report each quarter that your team runs on too, and a lighter operating read each month, signed, with every figure traceable back to a record.
Who signs it
Someone reads it before you do, and before your board does.
Rodrigo Fernandes, founder and principal analyst
Fifteen years reading SaaS and subscription data across founder, CFO, and exit roles. I know where the numbers bend, and the judgment calls that decide whether they are right: fully-loaded cost reconstruction, parent-child account reconciliation, bookings versus billings, peer-set judgment. The pipeline that does the mechanical work is one I built. The reading, and the signature on the last page, are mine.
What the read surfaces
The number was right. The reading was missing.
Two cases where the read caught what the metrics tracked but no one had interpreted, before it reached a board meeting or a diligence call.
Series A · vertical SaaS · $2.8M ARR
Expansion ARR, double-counted.
22% of reported "expansion ARR" was reclassification, not real expansion: customers moving from monthly to annual contracts, counted once for the rate uplift and again as new expansion. True quarterly expansion was 8.4 points lower. The founder corrected it with the lead investor before the round, and the diligence question was answered before it was asked.
Series B · vertical SaaS · $11M ARR
Gross-margin compression, explained.
Six of the eight points of gross-margin compression came from a one-time infrastructure migration the board had not been told about. The conversation shifted from "why is GM falling" to "when does the migration close." The round closed at the planned valuation.
Anonymized at company request. Plumbline does not name clients publicly.
What it costs
$1,990/ month
A board-grade report every quarter, an operating read every month. One analyst, one signature, delivered as a document you act on and forward.
One analyst, a deliberately small book, so every read gets the attention it is signed for.
- Month to month, no lock-in.
- Your first report within two weeks of your data.
- Start with one quarter, then decide.
- If it is not the right fit, I will tell you.
See exactly what one report looks like before you decide.
Or write directly: hello@plumbline.one