Booked, billed, earned and collected are four different moments in a customer relationship. A view that stops when the deal is signed sees only the first.
Treat the four as statuses, not a sequence. They arrive in different orders for different products and sales types, and sometimes all at once.
Track the commitment, because the commitment is often more than the payment. A signed agreement about loss or damage can matter more than the money.
A contract can be booked, billed and even collected without being earned. Chris's 2017 Marketo exit is the example: admin access never arrived, and he got everything back.
The four numbers are allowed to disagree. The change is that they sit on one record and every gap has an owner: sales, accounts receivable or finance.
Dates and calendars are hard to get right with AI help: leap years, time zones, and fiscal calendars that differ by country and business unit. Start with the people, and ask finance for the fiscal calendar and how each business unit defines each of the four numbers at the line-item level.
Contracts make mid-term seat additions and renewals workable. A renewal process that starts 30, 60 or 90 days out creates room for a person-to-person conversation about what year two needs.
Hand customer success an expansion number without a process behind it, and the request becomes admin that ends in no, or in giving it away.
Get the four statuses clear before forecasting. Once this part is in place, planning conversations about next year start to make sense.
Define your process around what makes sense for your business and your customers, not around how QuickBooks, NetSuite or HubSpot says it should be done.
