ERP for software & saas. Subscriptions, SLAs and revenue recognition on the same ledger.
A product company ships or it does not. Kinnow runs the roadmap, the customer contract, the support desk and the ledger as one record, so a release, a renewal and a deferred-revenue balance can be traced to each other. The United States edition opens from early 2027.
From early 2027How does Kinnow help a software product company? The ready-made setup for your industry (we call it an industry pack) is called Tech Product Development. It runs your backlog, sprints and releases, and asks for test results before a release ships. It keeps customer agreements as service contracts with renewal alerts, runs support tickets against the response times you promised customers (SLA plans) and can pass a ticket into the backlog, and works out revenue from the contract. Nothing is billed, filed or paid until a person says so. Nothing is filed, paid or posted without a person.
Your company, in one paragraph.
You build once and sell many times. Money comes from customer agreements, annual or monthly, and from services around them. Costs are engineers and the cloud bill. Deferred revenue is matched by hand between the billing tool and the books, a missed support promise turns up in an angry email instead of on a dashboard, and the board pack takes a week of exports from five systems.
Three things keep the founder awake: a renewal that lapsed without anyone deciding it, work started and never released, and a customer who raised the same issue four times before anyone saw the pattern.
How your month runs on Kinnow
The industry setup gives you three step-by-step routines that matter here: Trial to renewal, Idea to release and Campaign to trial.
| Step | Who | What Kinnow does | Where a person signs off |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Campaign to trial | Growth lead | A campaign needs a named audience and is approved before it goes live; sign-ups are contacted within 48 hours. Campaigns, lead sources and the funnel by stage are reported. | Campaigns above a budget you set need approval. |
| 2. Trial to customer agreement | Sales lead | Your sales pipeline takes a trial through activation, plan quoted, negotiation and won. A won deal becomes a service contract with value, billing cycle and end date. | Large deals raise a warning. |
| 3. Invoice and collect | Finance | You raise invoices in Sell on the cycle you choose. The customer sees them in the customer portal and can dispute them. A payment link can collect the money. | Credit limits above your value need approval. |
| 4. Plan and build | Product owner | Ideas go into the backlog as epics, stories and tasks, each with an estimate and a link to the requirement. You then commit them to a sprint and a release and follow them on a board. | A build above a value you set needs the product owner. |
| 5. Test and ship | Engineering lead | A fix cannot be marked resolved without a test report. A release can go out with a known gap only with a sign-off, and a named person is accountable. | Release sign-off by the role you name. |
| 6. Support | Support lead | Tickets run against the response and resolution times you promised the customer (SLA plans); one outside a plan is blocked. A ticket can be passed into the backlog, and it waits on hold until the fix lands. | The customer confirms before closure. |
| 7. Renew | Customer success | Renewal alerts go out at 60, 30 and 7 days before a contract ends. A score for the risk of losing a customer flags accounts at critical risk. | Renewal needs a senior sign-off. |
| 8. Recognize revenue | Controller | Each part of a contract is valued separately, Kinnow builds a schedule of when revenue is earned, and a monthly run posts the entry and the deferred balance. | A manager activates each contract. |
| 9. Close the month | Accounts head | The month-end close routine runs twelve checks, and seven must pass. Sales tax, where a state taxes your product, is added up by state for review. | People close the books and approve the returns. |
Follow one trial all the way to a renewal alert and a deferred-revenue balance.
What "subscription" means in Kinnow
The page title says subscriptions, so here is exactly what that covers. A customer agreement is a service contract: value, billing cycle (annual, quarterly or monthly), start and end dates and a renewal alert. Your team raises the invoices through Sales, and the revenue schedule counts the contract as earned evenly over its term or milestone by milestone.
Built
Service contracts with renewal alerts, invoices on any cycle, a customer portal, payment links, and revenue schedules that treat each part of a contract separately and track the deferred balance.
Not built
A plan catalog, usage metering, automatic recurring invoices, and MRR, ARR or cohort churn dashboards. Do not buy Kinnow expecting a billing engine; expect books that know your contracts.
What the ready-made setup covers
The ready-made setup for software companies brings nine limits, five sign-off routes, eleven starter questions for Ask Kinnow and nine reports, among them the project list, ticket list, campaign list, funnel by stage, lead source performance and requirement traceability. The United States setup adds sales-tax and payroll sign-off. The figures are plain numbers, so we go through each starting figure with you in dollars before you begin.
| Limit | Effect | Why it is there |
|---|---|---|
| Build commitment (project value) | Product owner approves | A large build commits engineers for quarters |
| Issue resolved without a test report | Blocked | A fix with no evidence is a guess |
| Release without full test evidence | Needs release sign-off | A named person is accountable for shipping over a gap |
| Campaign without an audience | Blocked | A campaign with no audience has no consent on record |
| Campaign budget | Approval | Growth spend is the cost that swells fastest |
| Ticket outside an SLA plan | Blocked | No plan means no clock, so it could never be late |
| Customer credit limit | Approval | Giving credit is a decision, not data entry |
| Open deal value | Warning | It changes the forecast the moment it is typed |
| Manual journal | Approval | Changes the books without a source document |
These are starting figures; set them to whatever your company wants reviewed.
Agents for a software product company
SLA Alert
Flags a ticket that is about to miss its response or resolution time.
Churn Sentinel
Gives each active customer a health score every night and flags the ones at critical risk.
Contract Renewal Watch
Looks at contracts nearing their end date so a renewal conversation is booked before one lapses.
Project Risk
Scores schedule slip and billing burn from milestones.
Campaign Strategist
Designed to draft a campaign brief from your goal and your own data, such as gaps in your sales pipeline, customers who have gone quiet and the time of year.
Sell + AccountCollections
Drafts overdue reminders and steps them up according to how many days a payment is actually late. A person approves each reminder before it goes out.
AccountAI Invoice Extractor
Reads the text of a supplier invoice and fills in the bill for you, checking that the amounts add up before anything is saved.
KnowAnomaly Detector
Checks nine business figures for unusual movements whenever an administrator or your scheduler starts a scan, and lists them in the Anomaly Feed, most serious first.
A weekly Executive Digest sums up the business for the founder. Each agent is tested with each client before it touches their books, and everything it produces waits for a person.
Ask us to show Churn Sentinel and Contract Renewal Watch on your own customer list.
Tax and compliance for a US software company
The first release has basic support, not a full US tax calendar. Alerts go out 15, 7 and 1 day before each recorded filing, and every date is one you or your tax adviser confirm.
| Filing | When it falls | What Kinnow prepares |
|---|---|---|
| State sales tax, where a state taxes your product | Per state, as recorded for each registration (where no due day is set, Kinnow assumes the 20th of the following month) | State-by-state totals of taxable sales and tax collected, for a person to type into each state return. The US invoice check expects an exemption certificate reference (the buyer's proof that no sales tax applies) or a reason on any zero-tax line |
| State sales-tax permit, annual report, foreign qualification | Each state's own schedule | Tracked registrations; a due date appears only once you enter the state's schedule. Kinnow does not decide economic nexus (whether your sales into a state are enough to need a permit there) |
| Payroll | Monthly run | Federal income tax withholding and FICA worked out in a payroll run that a second person approves. State income tax is not included and each payslip says so |
| Payroll deposits, quarterly payroll returns, W-2, 1099 | Not tracked | Not built in the first release |
What the founder sees
| Ask Kinnow | Answer comes from |
|---|---|
| Which releases have slipped their dates? | Project milestone status |
| What are customers raising most often? | Ticket list |
| Where is the funnel losing people? | Funnel by stage |
| Which growth campaigns are live? | Campaign list |
| Which backlog items cite no requirement? | Requirement traceability |
| Show me churn risk by account | Customer health scores |
Each answer shows its source and cost before it runs. Veil, our privacy layer, hides bank, tax and ID numbers and swaps names for stand-in codes before an AI call. It covers Ask Kinnow and most agents today; the rest are being added.
Bring your last board pack and see which numbers Kinnow reads from one set of records.
Questions
Can Kinnow run our subscription billing?
Not as a billing engine. A customer agreement is a service contract with a billing cycle, end date and renewal alerts, you raise invoices through Sales, and payment links can collect. Plans, usage metering and MRR dashboards are not built.
Can it recognize subscription revenue?
Yes. Each part of a contract is valued separately, Kinnow builds a schedule of when each part is earned, and a monthly run posts the entry and the deferred balance. A manager activates each contract.
Does Kinnow charge sales tax on software subscriptions?
Whether a state taxes software or digital services varies by state, and Kinnow does not decide nexus. The first release holds state base rates and a short starter list of tax-exempt categories, and we confirm rates with you and your tax adviser at set-up.
Can it replace our issue tracker?
For light use. Epics, stories, sprints, releases and components are there, and a fix needs test results before it counts as resolved. Source code and your build-and-release tooling (CI/CD) stay in your own developer tools.
How are SLA breaches handled?
Each ticket follows an SLA plan (the response times you promised the customer). The industry setup blocks a ticket outside a plan, and an alert flags tickets about to miss their time.
How are marketing consent and opt-outs handled for trial sign-ups?
A campaign needs a named audience and is approved before it goes live. The Consent and Deliverability Gate stops a marketing message that has no valid consent on record for that channel. Your counsel confirms the rules that apply to your messages.
How long does set-up take, and when does the US edition open?
About two weeks to first results for one company. The United States edition is available from early 2027.
Show me Kinnow for software & saas.
Answer three questions. Get the applications, the agents and a two-week plan for your business.