Desene Sterling, Sourcegraph’s vice president and controller, joined the company in 2021 as its first in-house accounting hire. Samantha “Sam” Herman, its accounting manager, joined soon after. Together, they have helped build the accounting function through years of new products, changing pricing models and increasingly varied customer contracts.
A changing business, with several ways to earn revenue
Sourcegraph offers cloud subscriptions, on-premises software and support, consumption-based products, professional services and engineering engagements. In September 2026, Sourcegraph added outcome-based pricing with the launch of Agentic Batch Changes, which is priced per changeset merged into a customer’s codebase. Each addition brings another set of commercial terms to understand and reflect in the revenue accounting.
Even the core offering isn’t simple. In an on-premises agreement, revenue from the software license may be recognized at delivery, while revenue from support is recognized over the service period. The open-source components in the software affect how much is recognized up front and how much over time.
Those arrangements also change over time. An enterprise customer might sign a multi-year agreement, expand its use of the platform, add a service or move from on-premises software to the cloud. The team has to determine what is being delivered, how the transaction price is allocated and when each part becomes revenue, and revisit the accounting when the arrangement changes.
The challenge is keeping the accounting consistent as those arrangements change, so the team can explain the resulting revenue numbers to its stakeholders.
The work the previous system was supposed to take away
Sourcegraph invested in an established billing and revenue management solution built for NetSuite. The expectation was simple: revenue and deferred revenue schedules would be accurate based on the information in each contract.
Getting the contracts into the software, however, did not remove the work of translating them. It synced with Salesforce, but it couldn’t handle many of the one-off terms in Sourcegraph’s contracts.
As Sourcegraph’s products, services and contract terms evolved, that work kept growing. The team had to make sure every nuance was correctly reflected in a system that was difficult to configure and relied heavily on manual updates. Keeping the software aligned with the business demanded constant attention, yet the team still could not feel confident in the numbers. Coming out of their last audit, they decided the most reliable course was to rebuild the revenue schedules in Excel. For a three-person accounting team, that meant taking on one of the most strenuous and stressful undertakings in revenue accounting at the very moment they needed the software to deliver.
Accro starts with Sourcegraph’s accounting
What interested the team about Accro was its use of AI to learn the accounting behind their work: how Sourcegraph’s business operated, how its contracts were interpreted and why particular accounting decisions had been made. That knowledge could become part of how the software handled each agreement, giving the team an alternative to continually translating their accounting into manual entries and settings.
Accro develops that understanding from Sourcegraph’s revenue policies, technical memos and supporting documentation. It connects the products and services the company offers with the methods behind its standalone selling price calculations, the treatment of earlier contracts and the reasoning behind previous decisions. Those relationships give the product a detailed accounting context for interpreting a new agreement.
The appeal extended beyond the contracts already in place. As Sourcegraph introduces products, changes commercial terms and develops new accounting treatments, that knowledge can be incorporated into Accro with the team’s input. The product can then draw on the updated context when assessing subsequent agreements.
From the contract to a number the team can verify
Audits were a big part of Desene’s decision to choose Accro. She needed a clear trail of what changed, why it changed and which system each number came from. Accro’s understanding of Sourcegraph’s accounting needed to translate into work the team could examine and stand behind.
Take an expansion to an existing agreement. Accro reads the new order form alongside the original contract and Sourcegraph’s revenue policy to assess whether the added scope should be treated as a separate contract or a modification. That treatment determines how the transaction price is allocated and how the revenue schedule is prepared.
Accro’s Controls view puts the reasoning beside the number. If the expansion is treated as a separate contract, the team can see why, with references to the supporting order form and revenue policy. In the previous system, finding what Sam needed could mean drilling down four layers. In Accro, the contract documents, performance obligations and revenue calculations are available together, allowing the team to follow the connection between what was agreed, how it was interpreted and how it became revenue.
The team can also review a history of changes and workflow events as each contract is processed and updated.
For Desene, that means being able to trace a number back to its source. For Sam, it means being able to check the work herself.
A partner as the business changes
Choosing Accro also meant working with a team that understood what Sam and Desene were trying to accomplish.
A message in Slack could become a call to work through the issue, bringing the accounting question and the product work into the same conversation.
Those conversations could start with the result Sourcegraph needed to achieve. Accro’s team understood the accounting well enough to explore the details with them and translate those requirements into how the software should work. That shared understanding, combined with the speed of the response, gave Sam and Desene a direct role in shaping the product around their work.
Their experience working with Accro gave them confidence that they could also bring forward requirements neither team had anticipated.
Accro’s commitment is to build that ongoing relationship with every customer: an AI product that does the revenue accounting work, with a team that stays involved as the business and its needs evolve.
Sourcegraph is already working with Accro on the next piece of the revenue accounting puzzle: billing. More on that soon.