NRR Simulator
Net revenue retention reaches the board pack as one number. Three movements pulling against each other produced it, and the total shows none of them. A stable but undeveloped base reads exactly like a leaking base rescued by a handful of fast-growing accounts. The plan and the headcount those two situations call for have nothing in common, and the figure on its own does not say which of the two applies.
The calculation lives in a spreadsheet rebuilt for every review, one nobody can reproduce a quarter later. Definitions drift on the way: a downward renegotiation books as contraction once and as partial churn the next time. The series stops being comparable and scenario discussion stalls for want of a shared basis. The simulator fixes the conventions and shows the gap between two assumptions.
NRR Simulator
How to read the result
What you enter
- Opening recurring revenue for the cohort
- Expansion: upsell, cross-sell, contracted volume increases
- Contraction: downgrades, seat reductions, downward renegotiations
- Churn: revenue from accounts lost outright
- Scenario tested: expansion points gained or contraction points avoided
How to read the result
- Opposite structures produce identical totals: NRR only reads alongside its components
- The gap between scenario and baseline names the component worth acting on in this cohort
- Above 100%, broad contraction can sit in the shadow of a few concentrated expansions
- What gets settled next: defend the installed base, or fund growth
What the result does not tell you
- The cohort is closed. No new-logo revenue enters it, and total company growth stays outside the frame.
- An account already lost but still inside its notice period appears nowhere: this is a closed-period measure, and the loss lands in the next one.
- Expansion shows as an amount, with no cause attached. An indexed price increase looks identical to usage-driven growth, though only one of them repeats.
- The scenario holds the other components still. Badly calibrated upsell pressure on fragile accounts feeds contraction all the same, and the arithmetic does not carry it.
Useful for framing a budget round or a portfolio review. The reported figure for the period is produced somewhere else.
A first thirty-minute conversation
Thirty minutes are enough to frame a retention, expansion or pricing issue, and see whether there is work to do together.