CHURN CALCULATION CHECKLIST
ShowMeYourSaaS — October 26, 2026
Guide: https://showmeyoursaas.com/articles/churn-rate/

Use one completed period and a fixed opening customer group.
The example below is FICTIONAL, not a company result or benchmark.

DEFINE THE MEASUREMENT
Start date, end date, and timezone:
Customer unit (paying account, organization, or subscriber):
Churn recognition (when access/paid status ends):
Opening customer count:
Opening recurring revenue basis (MRR and currency):
Treatment of canceled-and-reactivated accounts:
Treatment of multi-subscription accounts:
Billing report and reconciliation date:

OPENING-COHORT CONVENTION USED IN OUR CALCULATOR
Count opening customers still canceled at period end.
Exclude customers acquired during the period from both losses and opening counts.
Keep newly acquired customers in a separate early-retention view.
Normalize recurring revenue; annual cash receipts are not monthly MRR.
Normalize losses against opening MRR, without double-counting reversed movements.
Use expansion from the opening customer group, excluding new-customer revenue.
Do not sum repeated cancel/reactivate events as repeated customer losses.
Combined opening-revenue losses cannot exceed opening MRR under this convention.
If your billing report uses another event convention, label and reconcile it.

FORMULAS
Customer churn = opening customers lost / opening customers × 100
Gross revenue churn = (canceled MRR + downgraded MRR) / opening MRR × 100
Net revenue churn = (canceled MRR + downgraded MRR - expansion MRR) / opening MRR × 100
NRR = (opening MRR - canceled MRR - downgraded MRR + expansion MRR) / opening MRR × 100
For the same cohort and convention: NRR = 100% - net revenue churn.
Zero opening customers or zero opening MRR: the corresponding rate is undefined.

FICTIONAL EXAMPLE
Opening customers: 200
Opening customers still lost at period end: 8
New customers acquired: 30 (outside this churn calculation)
Ending total customer count: 200 - 8 + 30 = 222
Customer churn: 8 / 200 × 100 = 4%
Opening MRR: $10,000
Canceled opening MRR: $500
Downgraded opening MRR: $200
Expansion MRR from opening customers: $900
Gross revenue churn: ($500 + $200) / $10,000 × 100 = 7%
Net revenue churn: ($500 + $200 - $900) / $10,000 × 100 = -2%
NRR: ($10,000 - $500 - $200 + $900) / $10,000 × 100 = 102%
Ending opening-group MRR: $10,200, excluding newly acquired customers.

INTERPRETATION
Counts next to percentages:
Completed observation windows:
Voluntary losses versus unresolved payment failures:
Differences by audience, plan, and acquisition source:
One observed problem and proposed improvement:
Next review date:

A constant hypothetical 4% monthly churn implies 1 - 0.96^12 = about 38.73%
annual churn. This is a mathematical scenario, not a forecast.

Definition sources are linked in the guide. Check vendor conventions before
comparing reports; the calculator does not perform billing reconciliation.