Analyze how monthly recurring revenue develops after each acquisition month, so you can separate strong cohorts from revenue that fades quickly.
This Excel workbook organizes Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) into monthly cohorts and follows each cohort across successive periods. SaaS founders, finance teams, revenue operators, and investors can use the resulting active-MRR, retention, and churn views to understand the quality of recurring revenue rather than relying only on a company-wide total.
Compare cohort durability
See whether newer acquisition months retain MRR better or worse than earlier cohorts at the same stage of their lifecycle.
Locate revenue decay
Identify the months after acquisition when MRR churn is highest and where retention begins to stabilize.
Assess growth quality
Review new MRR alongside the continuing contribution from prior cohorts to distinguish acquisition growth from retention performance.
What does the template help you analyze?
The workbook converts monthly recurring-revenue data into comparable cohort views. Rows represent acquisition months, while the M1-to-M15 columns show how each cohort performs as it matures.
Active MRR by acquisition month. Follow the dollar contribution of each cohort across successive monthly periods.
MRR retention by cohort. Express remaining MRR as a percentage of the cohort's starting value and compare results with a weighted average.
MRR churn by cohort. Review the percentage of cohort MRR lost in each period and identify unusually weak acquisition months.
New MRR by calendar month. Place monthly additions in context with the active revenue carried forward from earlier cohorts.
Like-for-like lifecycle comparisons. Compare separate cohorts at M3, M6, M12, or another common age instead of comparing cohorts with different histories.
What is inside the workbook?
The visible workbook views combine monthly MRR figures with cohort schedules and percentage-based retention outputs. This structure keeps the underlying dollar movement and the normalized cohort performance available for review side by side.
Monthly MRR structure
A calendar-month layout captures new MRR and organizes active MRR beneath the month in which each cohort began.
Cohort-age schedules
M1 through M15 columns align cohorts by lifecycle age, making the same retention stage directly comparable across acquisition months.
Retention and churn heatmaps
Color-scaled percentage tables make strong and weak cells easier to locate while retaining the underlying numeric values.
The calendar-month schedule places new MRR above the active-MRR cohort matrix, showing how each acquisition month contributes to later totals.
Connect new MRR with continuing cohort revenue
This view shows the starting MRR for each month and the remaining active MRR from that cohort in later calendar periods. It helps users see whether growth comes mainly from new additions or from a durable installed base.
The active-MRR table aligns acquisition-month cohorts across M1 to M15, allowing direct dollar comparisons at the same cohort age.
Track the dollar value remaining in every cohort
Use the active-MRR matrix to follow the absolute revenue contribution of each acquisition month. Reviewing rows horizontally shows cohort decay; reading down a single lifecycle column compares cohorts at the same stage.
The MRR retention heatmap shows each cohort's remaining percentage by lifecycle month and includes a weighted-average row.
Normalize performance with MRR retention
Retention percentages remove differences in cohort starting size, so a smaller and a larger acquisition month can be evaluated on a comparable basis. The weighted-average row provides a consolidated view across the displayed cohorts.
The MRR churn table highlights period-by-period revenue loss for each acquisition cohort, with a weighted-average benchmark.
Identify when recurring revenue is lost
The churn view isolates the percentage decline by cohort and lifecycle month. Use it to locate recurring weak points, distinguish one-off cohort issues from broader patterns, and focus retention analysis on the periods with the largest losses.
How do you use the template?
Define the monthly cohorts
Use a consistent acquisition-month definition and map each recurring-revenue group to the month in which it started.
Replace the sample MRR figures
Populate the monthly new-MRR and cohort activity data required by the workbook using the same basis for every period.
Review the active-MRR schedule
Check how each row develops from M1 onward and compare equal-age columns across acquisition months.
Interpret retention and churn
Use the percentage heatmaps and weighted averages to identify improving cohorts, deterioration, and recurring lifecycle pressure points.
Who is this template for?
This workbook is suited to SaaS companies and other recurring-revenue businesses that can assign MRR to monthly acquisition cohorts. It supports founders reviewing product-market fit, finance teams preparing management analysis, revenue leaders diagnosing retention, and investors assessing whether reported MRR growth is supported by durable cohorts. It is most useful when monthly cohort data is available and cohort definitions remain consistent over time.
