Good morning. One software company publishes a number that is really about you, not about it. It moved this quarter, and the direction matters.
Top story — The dollars moving through the platform slowed faster than the bill did
ServiceTitan reported its quarter ended 31 July on 8 September. Skip the profit lines and go to the one labelled gross transaction volume — which the company defines as "the sum of total dollars invoiced by our customers through the ServiceTitan platform in a given period, which is intended to be a proxy for the total revenue our customers generate."
That is a quarterly readout on how much work the trades are billing.
GTV was $26.8 billion, up 17 percent. A year earlier it was $22.9 billion, up 19 percent. Growing, and growing more slowly.
Now put the company's own revenue next to it. Total revenue $292.8 million, up 21 percent — against 25 percent in the same quarter a year ago. So the platform grew faster than the money flowing through it, in both years.
Strip out professional services and other, and you get platform revenue at $284.5 million, against $232.7 million a year ago. Divide that by GTV and you get the part nobody prints: the software took about 1.02 percent of the dollars its customers invoiced a year ago, and about 1.06 percent this quarter. That is our arithmetic on two published numbers, and it is an average across every customer, not a rate anybody is quoted. But the direction is the point: the slice went up while the pie grew slower.
★ Then there is the guidance, and it is the sharpest thing in the release. For the quarter ending 31 October, ServiceTitan told investors to expect revenue of $285 million to $287 million — below the $292.8 million it just posted.
That is a change of shape. Last year the same two quarters went the other way: revenue rose from $242.1 million to $249.2 million, up about 3 percent, even though GTV fell over those same months, from $22.9 billion to $21.7 billion. The invoiced dollars dipped and the software revenue climbed anyway. This year the company is guiding the software revenue to dip too.
Measured against that same quarter last year, the guidance works out to roughly 14 to 15 percent growth — down from 21 percent this quarter and 25 percent a year ago. That is a step down of roughly thirty percent in the growth rate. Guidance is a forecast, not a result, and what it forecasts is ServiceTitan's own revenue — the company publishes no forecast of GTV at all. But its revenue comes from contractors, and it is telling investors to expect less of it than the quarter just gone.
Quick hits
The two halves of the platform line are growing at different speeds. Platform revenue splits two ways in the filing. Subscription revenue went from $174.8 million to $212.4 million, up about 22 percent. Usage revenue went from $58.0 million to $72.1 million, up about 24 percent — the fastest-growing line in the release. ⚠ The word "Usage" appears exactly once in the whole document, as a heading on a table. It is never defined, so we are reporting what the two lines did and claiming nothing about what drives either.
Development spending is running well ahead of revenue. Research and development went from $73.1 million to $100.6 million, up about 38 percent, against revenue up 21. Stock-based compensation and related payroll taxes inside that line nearly doubled, $12.7 million to $24.5 million. Strip those out and R&D still grew about 26 percent. That is a company spending hard into a product it has not yet shown you the numbers for.
The only AI number in the release is a forecast with no denominator. The company says it "exceeded our goal of doubling Max locations" during the quarter and "now expect[s] to end this fiscal year with over 700 enrolled Max locations." It does not say what it doubled from. It does not publish how many locations are on the platform in total — no customer count, no location count, in this release or in the one from last December. So 700 is a real target sitting next to no base.
The Tip — Work out your own cost per invoiced dollar, then negotiate the right line
Whatever platform you run, pull the last twelve months of what you paid it and sort every charge into two buckets: fixed (seats, licenses, the flat monthly) and volume-linked (anything that moves with jobs, invoices, payments or calls). Then divide the whole lot by what you invoiced over those same twelve months. That single number — your software cost per dollar billed — is the one to watch year over year, and almost nobody calculates it. It also tells you where to push at renewal. If your fixed bucket is the big one, you are negotiating seats. If the volume-linked bucket is growing faster than your revenue, you are negotiating a rate, and that is a different conversation with a different person. For scale, the company-wide average above works out near one percent of invoiced dollars — not a quote, not an offer, just a reference point for whether your own number looks sane.
Tool watch — [Not sponsored]
The release is free on sec.gov, filed as Exhibit 99.1 to a Form 8-K, and you do not need to read the whole thing. Two tables earn their keep. The highlights table at the top carries GTV and its growth rate — the trades billing number. The "Disaggregated Revenue" table in the financial statements is the only place subscription and usage are split, and it is the one the summaries skip. Any public company you buy from files the same way, so the habit transfers: your suppliers publish a quarterly account of how your industry is spending, and it costs nothing to read.
That's the callout. See you next time.
The Callout — the business brief for the trades. We label every commercial placement: [Sponsor], [Affiliate], or [Not sponsored]. Today's Tool watch is our own honest read — nobody paid for it, nobody was consulted, and the only thing named is a free government filing system. 231J Ramparts Road, Te Anau 9600, New Zealand · Unsubscribe anytime.
Sources: ServiceTitan, Inc. — Exhibit 99.1 to Form 8-K, "ServiceTitan Announces Fiscal Second Quarter Financial Results," 8 September 2026 (quarter ended 31 July 2026), SEC EDGAR · ServiceTitan, Inc. — Exhibit 99.1 to Form 8-K, "ServiceTitan Announces Fiscal Third Quarter Financial Results," 4 December 2025 (quarter ended 31 October 2025), SEC EDGAR