Any small growing SaaS founders struggling with runway, pricing, or messy numbers?

I work with small businesses on the finance side, and I’m trying to better understand how finance problems show up inside early SaaS companies.

One pattern I keep thinking about is this:

A SaaS business can have users, revenue, Stripe payments, invoices, and some growth activity but still not have a clear financial picture.

The bank balance says one thing.
MRR says another.
Costs keep increasing.
Churn is hard to read.
Runway is unclear.
Pricing may have been set before the real cost structure was understood.

From the outside, it feels like many small SaaS founders reach a stage where the product is moving, but the finance function has not caught up yet.

For those who have built or are building a SaaS company:

At what point did finance become a real pain point?

Was it after getting customers?
After hiring?
After ad spend started?
When investors asked for proper numbers?
When churn, CAC, runway, or gross margin became important?
Or was it messy from day one?

I’m not asking to promote anything. I’m genuinely interested in how founders experience this stage, because the textbook version of SaaS finance often looks much cleaner than the real thing.

Would appreciate hearing what it looked like in your case spreadsheet-based, ignored, outsourced, founder-managed, or something else.