Waterfall Chart
How you got from last month's revenue to this month's. A waterfall chart starts at an opening value, shows each positive and negative movement as a floating bar, and lands on a closing value. Every bar's position depends on the running total before it.
| Step | Value |
|---|---|
| Opening MRR | 482000 |
| New | 38400 |
| Expansion | 21600 |
| Contraction | -17800 |
| Churn | -24900 |
| Closing MRR | 499300 |
Net MRR grew 1.9%, but churn and contraction together removed 71% of what new and expansion added.
Growth here is being spent on replacing lost revenue. A retention point is worth more than an acquisition point at this ratio.
What is a waterfall chart?
A waterfall chart starts at an opening value, shows each positive and negative movement as a floating bar, and lands on a closing value. Every bar's position depends on the running total before it.
Why is a waterfall chart useful?
'Revenue went up 2%' is almost never the interesting fact. A waterfall decomposes it into new, expansion, contraction and churn - and those four can all be moving in directions the net number hides.
How RetainCLM uses it
Opening MRR, plus new, plus expansion, minus contraction, minus churn, equals closing MRR. A month where expansion alone offsets heavy churn looks healthy in the net and alarming in the decomposition.
The chart above is drawn from illustrative demo data chosen to make the visualization legible. It does not describe real RetainCLM customers. On a live account the same chart is drawn from your own customer, usage, billing and support data.
How to read it
Compare the sizes of the contribution bars, not their heights on the axis. Height is just wherever the running total happened to be.
Limitations to keep in mind
The steps must genuinely be additive and mutually exclusive, or the chart is simply wrong. Defining expansion and contraction inconsistently is the usual way a revenue waterfall stops reconciling.
Related concepts
A waterfall chart is most useful alongside customer retention analytics, churn prediction. RetainCLM builds these views on one unified customer record, so a pattern you notice in one visualization can be followed into the next without exporting anything.
Questions about the waterfall chart
What is a waterfall chart used for?
Explaining how a starting value became an ending value by showing each additive and subtractive component in sequence - most commonly monthly recurring revenue movement.
What is net revenue retention on a waterfall?
The closing value divided by the opening value, counting expansion, contraction and churn but excluding new business. A waterfall makes each of those components visible rather than collapsing them into one ratio.
Related visualizations
See a waterfall chart built on your customers
Book a demo and we will build this chart, and the rest of the library, against your own retention and revenue data.
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