What this says
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Final CEO board pack issued 16 Oct 2024. It reports contracted ARR of £648k, 24 customers and headcount of 18 at 30 Sep 2024, each drawn from executed order forms, live contracts and HR records.
What it is: an internal board pack prepared by Nell Ashcombe, stored as final. It gives three headline numbers and her reading of them.
Claims: "Contracted ARR stands at £648k at the quarter end." It counts customers by live contract, not CRM stage, and reports 24 customers and 18 staff.
Not settled: the pack says it does not show customer movement over the quarter, tier by customer, concentration in a few accounts or usage trends.
Currency: it is a snapshot at 30 Sep 2024 and is not current. Its figures should not be read as today's position.
Body
BG-Demo - Board Pack - quarter to 30 Sep 2024
Status: Final Prepared by: Nell Ashcombe, Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder Issued: 16 Oct 2024 Period covered: the quarter ending 30 Sep 2024
Purpose of this pack
This pack gives the board three headline numbers at the quarter end and my reading of them. I have kept it short on purpose. Where a number comes from, I say so. Where the evidence does not show something, I say that too.
Headline numbers
| Measure | Position at 30 Sep 2024 | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Annual recurring revenue (contracted) | £648k | Executed order forms, checked against invoices in accounting |
| Customers | 24 | Live contracts, not CRM lifecycle stage |
| Headcount | 18 | HR records |
Read the whole document (4,341 characters)
A note on method. ARR here is the contracted figure: what the executed order forms say, not what the CRM says. A CRM amount is a claim until it has been checked against the order form and the invoices. The customer count follows the same rule: an organisation counts only if it has a live contract, so an account marked "Customer" in the CRM with nothing live behind it is not in the 24. Headcount is the people HR says work at BG-Demo today, nobody else.
Annual recurring revenue
Contracted ARR stands at £648k at the quarter end. That is the subscription base we have to renew and grow. It does not include the one-off implementation fees we earn when a customer joins, and it is not a forecast.
Three things I want the board to hold in mind:
- The number is only as good as the order forms behind it. Where an order form changes a price, a term or a service level, the order form wins over everything else we hold.
- Credit notes are one-offs. They do not move ARR and I have not let them.
- Discounts apply to the first term only, so any account in its first term is carrying a price that will need to be explained at renewal.
Customers
We have 24 customers at the quarter end. Each one is a renewal conversation in due course, and each one is a possible upgrade, extra users, extra connectors or another team.
What this pack does not show: a movement in the customer count over the quarter, and which tier each customer sits on. I would rather leave those out than guess at them. They belong in the next pack, built from the order forms rather than from memory.
Headcount
There are 18 of us. For a company this size, that means each person carries a lot of the customer relationship, and the loss of one person is felt by named accounts. I would like the board to treat key-person risk, ours as well as our customers', as a standing item.
Commentary
Say what happened, say how you know. So, plainly:
- What happened. We closed the quarter with contracted ARR of £648k across 24 customers, run by a team of 18.
- How we know. The ARR is from executed order forms and accounting. The customer count is from live contracts. Headcount is from HR.
- What it means. We have a real subscription base and a small team. The work that matters most in the coming quarter is keeping what we have at the right price, and finding the next engagement inside accounts that already trust the brain.
- What I do not yet know. I cannot yet say, from this pack alone, how much of the base is concentrated in a few accounts, or how usage is trending across the customer set. Those are the two questions I would want answered before anyone reads too much into the headline.
Points for the board
| Topic | Ask of the board | Owner |
|---|---|---|
| Reporting basis | Agree that ARR and customer count are always reported from executed order forms and accounting, never from the CRM alone | Nell Ashcombe |
| Next pack | Agree that the next pack adds customer movement by tier and a usage view by account | Nell Ashcombe |
| Key-person risk | Note the dependence of named accounts on individuals, and agree to review it each quarter | Nell Ashcombe |
Next steps
- Reconcile every customer's order form to its invoices before the next quarter end, so that the ARR figure is checked line by line.
- Build the usage view, questions asked, active users and records indexed, so the board sees value, not only revenue.
- Bring the renewal calendar to the next board meeting, so we can see where the pricing conversations fall.
Best, Nell