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Example: Finance

Is churn a problem or not?

Golden turns a monthly subscription ledger into the board metrics: an MRR bridge, net revenue retention, and churn counted in logos and in dollars, side by side.

The problem

Sales and CS are both right

Priya runs finance at a B2B SaaS company with three plans: Starter, Growth and Scale. The board wants MRR movement, retention, the plan that's leaking, and the month you crossed $1M.

Meanwhile sales says churn is fine and customer success says it's a fire. They're looking at different numbers, and the spreadsheet that reconciles them doesn't exist yet.

The solution

Every metric from one ledger

One row per customer per month, tagged New, Expansion, Contraction, Churn or Existing. Golden builds starting MRR, retained MRR, monthly NRR and both churn rates from that as calculated fields.

A running total of MRR change lands exactly on MRR, so you know the ledger reconciles before anyone asks.

Step by step

How Golden answers it

1

Bridge one month of MRR

A waterfall for January 2025: starting MRR as the opening bar, then New, Expansion, Contraction and Churn. It walks $983,767 to $1,098,239.

2

Stack MRR by plan

A stacked area with a reference line at $1M. The Scale band does almost all the growing.

3

Put logo and revenue churn on one chart

Two lines, same months. Split logo churn by plan and Starter sits far above the other two.

4

Track net revenue retention

Monthly NRR as bars against a line at 100%. Ten of 2023's eleven measurable months fall below it, four of 2024's twelve, and none of 2025's six.

What you'll find

Both sides of the churn argument

  1. 01
    MRR crossed $1M in January 2025, at $1,098,239, and closed June 2025 at $1.43M.
  2. 02
    Monthly NRR climbed from 99.2% on average in 2023 to 100.9% in 2024 and 102.0% in H1 2025.
  3. 03
    Scale drove $395K of the $434K in expansion since January 2024, 91% of it.
  4. 04
    Starter loses 5.3% of its logos a month, yet overall revenue churn averages 1.1%. Starter is only $26,622 of MRR.
Go further

Ahead of the next board meeting

Forecast total MRR to December and read the probability band against a $1.75M year-end target. Run Explain Change on September to October 2024 and it points at Expansion inside the Scale plan.

Want cohorts? A retention chart shows Starter cohorts decaying while Scale holds near 100%. Export the running-total table to Google Sheets for the board pack.

Next step

Settle the churn debate

Bring your subscription ledger and walk into the board meeting with one set of numbers.