Company playbook: running your company on HyperLevel

We are our own first customer. This playbook is the long-term operating manual for a small software company that runs itself on HyperLevel (today still called HyperLevel in the app) – written for the founder of a German GmbH or sole proprietorship selling HyperLevel Cloud (Solo 49,99 €, Team & Company 99,99 €, Agency 199 € per month; self-hosting is free) in the DACH market. It works just as well for any small SaaS.

It has three parts that belong together:

• the template „Software- & SaaS-Firma (HQ)“ – the building blocks, loaded into a sub-account in one click (what it contains),
• the Academy course „Deine Firma mit HyperLevel führen“ – ten lessons with a 10-minute task each (printable version),
• this playbook – the routines, numbers and decisions for the years after.

Hinweis: Dieses Playbook ersetzt keine Beratung. Steuerliche Fragen (Rechtsform, Umsatzsteuer, Buchführung, Aufbewahrung) gehören zu deiner Steuerberaterin oder deinem Steuerberater, rechtliche Fragen (AGB, AVV, Datenschutz, Arbeitsverträge) zu einer Anwältin oder einem Anwalt. Alle Zahlen hier sind Faustregeln, keine Zusagen.

Quick start (one afternoon)

1. Create a sub-account for your own company (Einstellungen → Sub-Accounts), e.g. „HyperLevel GmbH“.
2. Agentur → Snapshots → Vorlagen von … → Software- & SaaS-Firma (HQ) → In Sub-Account laden. Workflows arrive as drafts, help articles as drafts.
3. Work through lesson 1 of the course (Akademie → Kurs: Deine Firma führen): company data, tax data, team, 2FA.
4. Connect e-mail sending, read the template’s mails once, dry-run the workflows, then activate them.
5. Point the landing page at the waitlist form (landing page) and, on the cloud instance, set PGHL_HQ_LOCATION (cloud bridge).

Which area handles what

Each heading is one lesson of the course; the lesson walks you through the screens.

1. Company setup

Einstellungen → Firma, Rechnungen, Team, Mein Konto. Legal name with legal form, address, logo, tax number or VAT ID, bank account, invoice numbering, small-business rule (Kleinunternehmer) yes/no. One login per person, rights per area, 2FA for every admin. Lesson: Firmen-Setup.

2. Sales

Opportunities, Lead-Scoring, Vertrieb. The pipeline Kunden (Cloud) is your customer lifecycle: Warteliste → Testphase → Kunde → Gekündigt / Rückgewinnung; Agentur-Partner and Presse & Influencer track the two channels that compound. Lead scoring tells you whom to call first, sequences send personal follow-ups that stop on reply, quotes carry an online signature. Lesson: Vertrieb.

3. Marketing

Funnels, Formulare, Kampagnen, Social Planner, Attribution. One landing page with one promise and the waitlist form (Double-Opt-in), a weekly newsletter, social posts planned a week ahead, and attribution to see which source brings customers, not just leads. Lesson: Marketing.

4. Customer service

Konversationen, Tickets, Wissensdatenbank, Einstellungen → Service. Conversations for quick answers, tickets for anything with a deadline. The support form creates tickets; the SLA workflows warn before a deadline and mark a breach. Every question that comes twice becomes a help article. Lesson: Kundenservice.

5. Finance

Rechnungen, SEPA, Mahnwesen, Buchhaltung, Gewinnrechner. E-invoices (ZUGFeRD/XRechnung), SEPA direct debit without a payment provider, dunning with your approval for the last step, receipts and bank matching, the monthly DATEV export for your tax advisor, and the profit calculator to test prices against real costs. Lesson: Finanzen.

6. Projects & time

Aufgaben, Projekte, Zeit. The template’s project CEO-Routinen holds the recurring tasks of this playbook. Keep a second project „Roadmap“ (Ideen → Geplant → In Arbeit → Fertig). Track time for one week per quarter to see where your hours go. Lesson: Projekte & Zeit.

7. AI employees & automation

Automationen, KI-Agenten. Dry-run every workflow before activating it. AI agents get only the tools they need; they write drafts, people send. Set a cost limit, read the log weekly, send customer data only to providers with a DPA (AVV). Lesson: KI-Mitarbeiter & Automatisierung.

8. KPIs & weekly routine

Berichte → CEO-Cockpit (SaaS). MRR, ARR, active subscriptions, running trials, lead → customer, cancellations, leads per source, support SLA. Schedule it by e-mail for Monday 8:00. Targets: KPIs. Lesson: Kennzahlen & Wochen-Routine.

9. Privacy & compliance

Einstellungen → Einwilligung & Recht, Protokoll, Buchhaltung. Double-Opt-in with proof, versioned consent texts, cookie banner, imprint and privacy policy; a list of every processor with a DPA; retention periods; GoBD: finalised invoices and bookings are immutable, corrections go through cancellation and credit notes. You still write your own procedure documentation (Verfahrensdokumentation). Lesson: Datenschutz & Compliance.

10. Scaling

Einstellungen → Team, Agentur → Snapshots, Agentur → Kunden. Rights by role (support, sales, bookkeeping), your own improved HQ saved as a snapshot, agency partners with their own sub-accounts. Lesson: Skalieren.

Routines

The template creates these as recurring tasks in the project CEO-Routinen; adjust days and times to your week.

Daily (15 minutes)

1. Tickets with SLA at risk (Tickets, sort „SLA zuerst“) – answer or reassign.
2. New conversations – answer, or turn into a task.
3. Tasks due today, including the workflow tasks (trial check-in calls, demo requests).
4. Trials on day 3, 7 and 12 – a short personal note beats another automated mail.

Weekly (Monday, 30 minutes – the CEO review)

1. Numbers (10 min): open the CEO cockpit. MRR vs. last week, new trials, trial → customer, cancellations, SLA rate.
2. Three observations: what changed, and why? Write them into the task.
3. Customers: every cancellation reason of the week, every SLA breach.
4. Three decisions for the week – not ten.

Friday: roadmap round – contacts tagged roadmap:wunsch, the „Feature-Wunsch“ submissions, top 3 into the roadmap project, a reply to everyone who asked.

Monthly (first working days)

• Invoices: open items, dunning levels, failed payments (tag zahlung:offen from the cloud bridge).
• Bookkeeping: receipts complete, bank matched, DATEV export to your tax advisor; VAT return if you file monthly.
• KPIs of the month into the wiki (one page per month): MRR, net new MRR, churn, trial → paid, CAC by channel.
• Publish one help article from the questions of the month; clean up tags and duplicates.

Quarterly

• Prices and plans: update the profit calculator with real costs, compare to churn reasons and win/loss notes.
• Channels: cost per customer per source (attribution) – double down on one, stop one.
• Goals for the next quarter (three, measurable), roadmap themes.
• Access review: team rights, admins with 2FA, API keys and AI agents nobody uses any more.
• Restore test of a backup (self-hosted) or a data export (cloud).

Yearly

• Annual accounts with your tax advisor; check the legal form (sole proprietor → GmbH) with them when profit grows.
• Review processors and DPAs, retention and deletion, consent texts, imprint, terms and privacy policy.
• Insurance (liability, cyber), contracts with freelancers, domain and certificate renewals.
• Write the year’s lessons into the wiki and save the HQ sub-account as a new snapshot.

KPIs and target ranges

Rules of thumb for an early SaaS selling to small businesses (first 1–3 years). Look at trends, not single weeks; with fewer than ~30 customers every percentage is noise.

KPI	Where in the app	Healthy range	Act when
MRR growth (month over month)	CEO cockpit: MRR	10–20 % in year one, 5–10 % later	below 5 % for two months
Waitlist → trial	Pipeline Kunden (Cloud)	20–40 % of confirmed sign-ups	below 15 % – invite faster, sharpen the promise
Trial → paid	Cockpit: Lead → Kunde, pipeline	15–25 % without card, 40–60 % with card upfront	below 10 % – onboarding, not marketing
Activation (setup done within 3 days)	Trial check-in tasks, notes	more than 50 %	below 30 % – fix the first ten minutes
Logo churn per month	Cockpit: Kündigungen	below 3 %	above 5 % – read every reason this week
Net revenue retention	Subscriptions (MRR per cohort)	above 100 %	below 90 %
LTV : CAC	Profit calculator, attribution	above 3 : 1	below 2 : 1
CAC payback	Profit calculator	below 12 months	above 18 months
First response (support)	Cockpit: support table	within 8 business hours	SLA rate below 95 %
Gross margin	Bookkeeping reports	above 75 %	below 65 % – hosting, AI and support costs
Runway	Bookkeeping, bank	more than 12 months	below 6 months – cut costs or raise money now

When to hire or automate

Automate first when a task is repetitive, rule-based and harmless when it goes wrong once – welcome and onboarding mails, tagging, task creation, reminders, reports. Keep human what builds trust: cancellations, complaints, pricing exceptions, anything legal.

Hire when:

• a non-automatable task takes more than 10 hours a week for two months in a row (track it with time tracking),
• the SLA rate stays below 95 % although the help center answers the common questions → first hire: support,
• you turn away demos or partners because there is no time → next: sales / partner management,
• month-end takes more than two days → hand bookkeeping preparation to an assistant or your tax advisor’s office.

Before hiring, write the routine into the wiki (what, how often, which screens, what „done“ means) and create a role with exactly the rights it needs. Freelancers first, employees when the work is permanent – and let your tax advisor or lawyer check the contract (Scheinselbstständigkeit is a real risk in Germany).

The HQ template

Agentur → Snapshots → Vorlagen (POST /api/snapshot-templates/saas-hq/apply, admins; data in server/services/hq-template.ts, mails in server/services/hq-template-mails.ts). It loads once per sub-account (a second load needs again: true); a fresh sub-account’s empty default pipeline is replaced.

Part	Contents
Pipelines	Kunden (Cloud): Warteliste → Testphase → Kunde → Gekündigt / Rückgewinnung · Agentur-Partner · Presse & Influencer
Fields	Tarif (plan), MRR, Quelle (source), Betrieb (Cloud / Self-hosted), Testphase endet am, Kündigungsgrund, Abrechnung (interval), Cloud-Konto (ID)
Tags	status:warteliste, status:testphase, status:kunde, status:gekuendigt, plan:*, betrieb:*, quelle:*, roadmap:wunsch, support:sla-verletzt, newsletter, demo-anfrage …
Forms	Warteliste & Newsletter (Double-Opt-in, always on), Demo-Anfrage, Support (creates tickets), Feature-Wunsch
Workflows (drafts)	Waitlist DOI confirmed → welcome series · trial onboarding day 0/1/3/7/12 with a check-in task · trial ends (3 days before) → offer · became customer → clean up · cancellation → thanks, reason, winback after 45 days · SLA at risk → team + task · SLA breached → tag + escalate · feature wish → roadmap tag + thanks · demo request → task
E-mail templates	14 German mails in a friendly, honest du-tone (the workflows send the same texts)
Products	HyperLevel Cloud Solo, Team & Company, Agency (monthly, 19 % VAT)
Helpdesk	Categories, auto-reply with the SLA promise, help-center title; four draft articles: Cloud vs. Self-Hosting, Preise, Umzug von HighLevel, DSGVO & AVV
Community	Group „HyperLevel Community“ with eight channels (announcements, introductions, help, self-hosting, moving from HighLevel, templates, feature wishes, agency partners)
Dashboard	CEO-Cockpit (SaaS): MRR, ARR, active subscriptions, running trials, lead → customer, new leads, cancellations, SLA rate, lifecycle funnel, leads per source, MRR per interval, support times
Routines	Project CEO-Routinen with recurring tasks: daily round, weekly review, Friday roadmap round, month-end, quarterly review, yearly check

The trial workflows count on two signals: the tag status:testphase (set by hand, by the landing page flow or by the cloud bridge) and the date field Testphase endet am.

Landing page waitlist (dogfooding)

The public landing page posts its waitlist/newsletter form into your HQ sub-account through the normal forms module – same validation, honeypot and rate limit, Double-Opt-in, consent proof, attribution and workflows as every form. A landing page built elsewhere only needs these routes (server/modules/landing-waitlist.ts); the built-in one (landing.md) uses the hook in cloud waitlist mode – see below.

Setting	Meaning
PGHL_LANDING_LOCATION	Sub-account id that receives the sign-ups. Empty = the hook is off.
PGHL_LANDING_FORM	Form id in that sub-account. Empty = its newest form named „Warteliste & Newsletter“ (the HQ template’s). A wrong id switches the hook off instead of posting elsewhere.

Method	Path
GET	/api/public/landing/waitlist	{ enabled, form_id, fields, thank_you } – what to render ({ enabled: false } when not configured)
POST	/api/public/landing/waitlist	Same body as a form submission: the field names (first_name, email, consent: true, …), plus _hp (honeypot), _ts (Turnstile, if the form has a captcha), _attr/_page/_utm_* for attribution. plan is accepted for custom.plan; source defaults to „Landingpage“. Answers like the form ({ ok, id }, or a German error message).

Server-rendered pages on the same instance can call app.services.landingWaitlist.config() and .submit(ctx, body) instead. The flow: sign-up → contact with tags status:warteliste and newsletter → confirmation mail → consent.confirmed → the waitlist workflow starts the welcome series and moves the contact into Warteliste.

Cloud waitlist mode (the hosted cloud is not open yet – cloud.md → Waitlist mode): the landing page, /cloud and /start show a waitlist form of their own that posts to POST /api/public/cloud-waitlist. With PGHL_LANDING_LOCATION set it goes through this hook – source „Cloud-Warteliste“, the chosen plan as Solo / Team & Company / Agency in custom.plan, the form’s consent text shown on the page – so every interested person lands in the pipeline Kunden (Cloud) with Double-Opt-in like any other waitlist sign-up. Without it, the entries stay in a built-in list under Agentur → Cloud → Warteliste (CSV export, delete; no mail is ever sent from it); import that CSV into HQ later if you like.

Cloud → HQ CRM bridge

On the cloud instance, set PGHL_HQ_LOCATION to the HQ sub-account and every customer’s lifecycle shows up in your own CRM: signup and trial, trial ending, subscribed, plan change, failed payment and dunning, cancellation and deletion create or update one contact and one deal in Kunden (Cloud), with plan, MRR, interval, source and the cloud account id. An erased account anonymises the contact. Details: cloud.md.