The GASP Standard

The Unified SaaS Reporting Standard

GAAP for SaaS.

Generally Accepted Accounting Principles standardised financial reporting for management and investors alike. The GASP Standard does the same for SaaS metrics, with one consensus definition per metric and one way to calculate it.

Foundation

The GASP Standard provides canonical definitions for SaaS metrics across all departments, drawing on published work from the SaaS Metrics Standards Board, SaaS Capital, KeyBanc and others.

The standard includes:

Core financial metrics (ARR, NRR, GRR, CAC, etc.) with precise formulas and benchmarks
Operational metrics across all departments (Support, Engineering, Product, HR, etc.)
Relationships between metrics showing cause and effect
This overview and the metrics index, which together give the standard view of business health
Practical implementation guidance

We follow industry consensus where it exists and fill the gaps from practitioner input and published research.

The Problem

Every SaaS company measures “churn” differently. Ask five companies for their NRR and you’ll get five different formulas. Boards, investors and operators spend meetings arguing about definitions when they could be discussing the numbers.

The GASP Standard writes down how the industry already measures performance: a consensus that exists in practice but had not been recorded in one place.

What This Standard Provides

Canonical definitions for every metric, from the ops review to the board room
Exact formulas, one calculation per metric, written in a machine-readable grammar. Each compiles to SQL in four dialects (Postgres, Snowflake, BigQuery and Databricks) and ships as Apache Ossie files. Breakdowns such as by segment or by plan are declared on the metric itself
Industry benchmarks for context
Relationships between metrics, showing how they move together
The metrics index, every metric by department with the Core Metrics as the view of business health

The standard is opinionated on purpose and expects you to adopt the definitions as written.

From Ops Dashboard to Board Deck

Most SaaS metrics frameworks are written for operators or for investors. The GASP Standard serves both through its dual-lens framework: key metrics have two forms, Operating (O) and Market (M), computed from the same underlying data through the Commercial Event Ledger and Attribution Taxonomy Layer.

O-form metrics reflect the internal economics, the numbers ops teams run the business on
M-form metrics follow investor-comparable definitions, the numbers boards and investors benchmark against peers

Both forms come from the same events, so nobody has to keep a spreadsheet reconciling the ops number with the board number.

Scope

This standard covers: Subscription-based SaaS with recurring revenue. It defines the building blocks every SaaS business shares.

This standard does not cover:

Pure consumption pricing: metered revenue with no contracted commitment. MRR and ARR exclude usage fees that are not contractually guaranteed, while usage that meets or exceeds a contracted commitment counts as expansion (the ATL usage_realisation tag)
Implementation edge cases: downstream concerns for individual businesses
Industry-specific variations: vertical SaaS may have additional metrics

The aim is a foundation any SaaS business can adopt. Daily is the atomic unit, with weekly, monthly and annual views derived from it.

Principles

Consensus over custom. These definitions reflect industry standard practice. Your business is not special enough to need different definitions. Where you must deviate, keep the canonical formula as it is and document your variant beside it, using the adapter’s field transform and notes to record how your data differs, so the two can be reconciled.
Precision over flexibility. Each metric has one canonical formula, never “it depends.” Where a metric has Operating and Market forms, the standard declares both beside the canonical formula.
Outcomes over activity. We pick metrics for what they say about the business rather than for how easy they are to track.
Connection over isolation. Metrics move together. The standard records how each one feeds the others, since a single number makes most sense read next to the metrics that move it.

Structure

Layers

Layer	Purpose	Audience
Core Metrics	Define overall business health	Board, Executives
Departmental Metrics	Function-specific performance	Department leaders
Diagnostic Metrics	Investigate problems	Analysts, Operators

Documents

Document	Purpose
Definitions	Canonical definitions for all terms, the source of truth
Relationships	How metrics connect and influence each other
Commercial Event Ledger (CEL)	The atomic event layer behind the revenue, retention and cost metrics
Attribution Taxonomy Layer (ATL)	The event tags that separate the Operating and Market forms
Signal Type Taxonomy	The four signal types: outcome, leading, efficiency and operational

Departments Covered

Department	Focus
Core	MRR, ARR, NRR, CAC, LTV: the fundamentals
Sales	Pipeline, win rate, quota, deal velocity
Marketing	Funnel, MQLs, CAC, demand generation
Customer Success	Health scores, retention, expansion
Support	Tickets, CSAT, resolution, efficiency
Onboarding	TTFV, completion, activation
Product	Usage, adoption, stickiness, delivery
Engineering	Uptime, DORA metrics, incidents
Finance	Margins, burn, cash, profitability
RevOps	Billing, collections, revenue recognition
People	Turnover, eNPS, hiring, engagement
Partnerships	Channel revenue, partner performance
Professional Services	Utilization, project delivery, margins

Signal Types

Every metric carries one primary signal type of four: outcome, leading, efficiency or operational. The Signal Type Taxonomy explains each type and lists the metrics in it.

How to Use This Standard

Read the Core Metrics first. They are the numbers that define business health.
Map your data sources. For each metric, identify where the input data lives in your systems.
Implement the canonical formulas as defined. If your business needs a local variant, keep the canonical formula unchanged, document the variant beside it and record how your data differs in the adapter’s field transform and notes.
Start from the metrics index. The Core Metrics give the standard view of business health.
Investigate with Departmental Metrics. When a core number is off, drill into the department behind it.