Month-end close for a SaaS entity acquired into an international group

User.com is a SaaS marketing automation company built in Poland, used by clients across Europe and the US, competing in a category with established European and US players. After joining Positive Group, its finance function had to operate at two levels at once: as a standalone Polish SaaS business with its own commercial metrics (MRR, cohorts, churn), and as a reporting entity inside a French group with its own CFO, intercompany flows, and consolidation calendar.

That kind of dual reporting needs a finance team that knows both. Polish accounting on one side, group-level reporting in EUR on the other, with intercompany invoices, FX, Stripe payouts, and partner commissions all running every month at the same time. The acquired-entity-inside-a-group setup is messier than people think — and it's a pattern that breaks more post-M&A integrations than the headline integration risks ever do.

That's where we came in.

• Two reporting layers — Polish entity and French group — each with its own format and audience
• Multi-currency operations (PLN + EUR) requiring FX-aware reporting and monthly translations
• Stripe and Braintree payouts requiring monthly reconciliation against invoices, with a 7-day grace period for failed card payments
• SaaS-specific metrics (MRR, new cohort, retention cohort, deferred income) tracked alongside statutory results
• Multiple intercompany flows across several European companies, requiring careful accounting before close
• Partner commission accruals booked monthly based on partner-submitted invoices
• Tight monthly close cadence to fit the group's reporting schedule

Instead of treating it as a project measured in weeks, we built it as a workflow we run every month.

The month close, end to end

‍We run the close start to finish: SaaS metrics, financial close, intercompany, group reporting. Same checklist, same cadence, every month. The Polish accounting partner books in line with our chart of accounts. Stripe and Braintree payouts reconcile against invoices with the grace period built in. Bookings flagged "do not book" get verified before the monthly accounting meeting and pushed back to the accountants if their status changed.

SaaS metrics aligned with finance

‍MRR, new cohort, retention cohort, and deferred income are calculated on the last working day of the month. All of these inside the same reporting workflow, not in a separate file next to the financials. New cohort revenue ties back to invoices booked through Stripe and direct sales, with FX applied at the NBP (Polish National Bank) rate from the day before invoice issue.

Group-ready reporting

‍Budget vs. Actual goes to the Positive Group CFO and controller each month with a short summary of the largest variances and any flagged discrepancies. Staff costs are translated into EUR. Every line on the report is reproducible — every number traces back to a source document or a system entry.

The intercos workflow

‍Reinvoices get raised and logged. Foreign entity items get reconciled. None of this is glamorous. All of it has to happen before the close lands.

• Documented monthly close workflow tying together accounting, Stripe, Braintree, partner commissions, and group reporting
• MRR + cohort tracking integrated with statutory numbers — not maintained on the side
• Multi-currency reporting (PLN/EUR) with FX adjustments at NBP rates
• Intercompany reconciliation workflow across Positive Group entities
• Accrual logic for partner commissions, sales bonuses, and recurring costs
• Reporting cadence aligned to the group's calendar in Paris

For a SaaS inside an international group, a monthly close that doesn't land on time is a problem the entire group sees. User.com's does. The team in Warsaw operates the SaaS business. The CFO in Paris gets the numbers needed to consolidate. We sit in the middle and make sure both sides have what they need, every month.

The pattern is broader than this one engagement: most post-M&A integrations underestimate how much work the acquired entity's finance function has to do to operate inside the new group, and overestimate how quickly the group's reporting calendar will simply absorb whatever the subsidiary sends up. The gap between those two assumptions is where months get lost. Closing that gap is what we build.