SaaS chart of accounts template (Excel)

At minimum: subscription and services revenue kept separate, deferred revenue as a liability, cost of revenue accounts for hosting, payment processing and support, and operating expenses split into sales and marketing, research and development, and general and administrative. That split is what lets gross margin and CAC come straight off the profit and loss.

Hosting for the live product goes in cost of revenue, along with payment processing and customer support. Development and staging environments go in research and development.

Gross. Record the full charge as revenue, the Stripe fee as a cost of revenue expense, and the payout to your bank as a transfer from a Stripe clearing account. Booking only the net payout understates both revenue and cost.

It is a liability on the balance sheet. When a customer prepays for a year, the cash goes to deferred revenue and one twelfth moves to subscription revenue each month as the service is delivered.