Software as a service
For accounting software: whether deadline traffic and accountant referrals bring subscribers who stay.
Accounting software is bought by small business owners and freelancers, often on an accountant's advice and often close to a tax deadline, then kept for years if it fits. Tally ties each subscription to the visit that won it and follows its renewals, so you can see which guides, referrals and seasons bring customers worth keeping.
14 days free, no card needed.
01How they sell
- SubscriptionMonthly tiers by features or number of businesses, with yearly plans bought by owners who are already sure; a customer who fits can stay for many years.
- FreemiumA free tier for invoicing or a single account, upgraded when the owner needs bank reconciliation, payroll or tax returns.
02Payments it reads
- StripePlans through Checkout and the in-app billing page, with renewals and refunds read; yearly renewals arrive as single large invoices.
- PaddleSome sell internationally through Paddle so that VAT and sales tax on the subscription itself are handled; transactions and adjustments are read.
What Tally can't read
- Payments your customers receive from their own clients through your invoicing feature go to their accounts, not yours, so they aren't read.
- Bank feeds, ledgers and tax filings inside the product are never read.
- Plans an accounting firm pays for on its clients' behalf under a partner agreement settled by bank transfer aren't read.
- Subscriptions billed by a bank or partner platform through its own checkout don't pass through your account, so Tally doesn't see them.
03Where buyers come from
- Accountants and bookkeepersOne adviser can recommend the same tool to many clients; give each firm a tagged link and its clients' revenue sits on one row.
- Deadline searchesSearches about filing, VAT returns or expense categories rise ahead of deadlines and bring owners who need a fix this week.
- Switching guidesOwners leaving another product after a price change read migration and comparison pages and move fast once the import looks easy.
- YouTubeBookkeeping tutorials show the product in use; viewers may come back by typing the name, which Readable Direct counts as typed rather than unknown.
04What Tally answers
Do customers sent by accountants stay longer than those from search?
Lifetime value by first source totals each customer's payments, renewals included, with the repeat rate; an adviser whose clients renew year after year stands apart from a search term whose customers leave after the deadline.
Lifetime valueDid the rush before the filing deadline come from our guide?
Every sale in the rush has a receipt with its visits and the credited one. Open a sample and you can see whether the guide sits in their journeys or whether they arrived from an accountant's link.
ReceiptsWhich guides lead to a trial?
Mark the trial button with data-fast-goal and the goals view shows its completions, converting visitors and their revenue; the page breakdown then says which guides those visitors landed on.
Goals and funnelsDo owners buy in a hurry before a deadline, or after weeks of reading?
Path to purchase gives the share who buy on their first visit and the median time to purchase; compare the weeks before a deadline with a quiet month to see how your buyers change.
Path to purchaseCan we hear at once when a yearly subscriber is refunded?
Refund alerts go by email, Slack, Discord, Telegram or webhook, naming the sale they reverse and the source that sale was credited to.
Alerts and digests
05Numbers worth watching
- Renewals
- Renewals by first source; in accounting, the customers a channel keeps matter more than the ones it signs.
- Lifetime value by first source
- Average lifetime revenue by first source, worth reading only once yearly plans have come round at least once.
- First-visit buyers
- The share who pay on their first visit, which tends to rise near a deadline and says how much urgency is doing the selling.
- Engaged time
- Engaged time on guides, counted only while the tab is in view and the reader moved recently, so a guide left open in a tab doesn't look read.
06An example
Lifetime value by first source
All time: every payment since 1 Nov 2025. The period above doesn't apply.
| First source | Customers | Lifetime revenue | Average value | Renewals | Repeat rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GoogleOrganic Search | 325 | $40,560 | $125 | 845 | 52% |
| ChatGPTAI Assistants | 126 | $21,071 | $167 | 391 | 61% |
| Direct | 178 | $18,216 | $102 | 374 | 44% |
| NewsletterEmail | 94 | $17,362 | $185 | 357 | 69% |
| Hacker NewsOrganic Social | 84 | $11,741 | $140 | 227 | 55% |
| x.comOrganic Social | 115 | $10,190 | $89 | 161 | 33% |
| RedditOrganic Social | 84 | $9,016 | $107 | 160 | 40% |
| PerplexityAI Assistants | 42 | $6,342 | $151 | 101 | 57% |
| Every source | 1,048 | $134,498 | $128 | 2,616 | 51% |
A customer is a visitor linked to a sale, counted under the source of their first visit. Lifetime revenue is net of refunds and chargebacks; repeat rate is the share who paid more than once (a renewal, an upgrade or another purchase). $13,167 from 426 payments not linked to a visitor is in no row.
07Setting up
- WordPressIf the marketing site and its guides run on WordPress, add the tag to the theme's head or with a header plugin, so every guide carries it.
- StripePass the visitor's id in the metadata of the Checkout Session and subscription_data, so a yearly renewal years on still credits the first source.
- Give each accounting firm in your partner programme a UTM-tagged link, so referrals show per firm.
08Questions
Is tax included in the revenue shown?
No. Amounts are shown without tax and converted to US dollars at the ECB rate for the day, so revenue from different countries compares directly.
Is a yearly plan shown all at once or spread over the months?
As the payment, on the day it was made. A yearly plan is one sale and each anniversary a renewal, credited to the visit that won the first payment.
Can I see which accounting firms send customers?
Yes, if each firm shares a link with its own UTM campaign; the sources breakdown then lists every firm with the revenue of the customers credited to it.