CFO Pulse Social Media and Updates

ARR Hides Five Metrics; Track Them All

Most SaaS founders know their ARR. Very few can explain where it came from. I've sat in dozens of board meetings where someone says "ARR is up 20%" and the room nods. Then a board member asks "how much of that is new logos vs expansion?" Silence. Scrambling. "Let me get back to you on that." That's not a good look. ARR is one number. But there are five numbers hiding inside it. And if you can't see all five, you're not really running your business. You're just watching it. Let me break it down. → Opening ARR Where you started. Simple enough. But this is your baseline for everything else. If you don't track this monthly, you're already behind. → New ARR New customers. New logos. The stuff sales gets excited about. Important, yes. But it's not the whole story. I've seen companies celebrate new ARR while ignoring the hole in the bucket. → Churn The hole in the bucket. Customers who left. Revenue that walked out the door. This number hurts to look at. Look at it anyway. → Expansion Existing customers paying you more. Upsells, cross-sells, plan upgrades. This is the cheapest revenue you'll ever get. If this number is flat, you have a product problem. → Contraction Existing customers paying you less. Downgrades. Seat reductions. Not as bad as churn, but it adds up fast. Most founders ignore this one until it bites them. → Ending ARR Where you landed. Opening plus new plus expansion minus churn minus contraction. That's the real math. This dashboard shows all of it. One view. Summary chart on the left showing growth over time. Waterfall on the right showing exactly how you got from opening to ending. Monthly breakdown at the bottom so you can spot trends before they become problems. When a board member asks "where did ARR come from?" you don't scramble. You share your screen and walk them through it in 30 seconds. That's the difference between knowing your number and understanding your business. I built this dashboard inside Model Wiz. It's a free Excel add-in that connects to your data and builds this automatically. No manual updates. No formula headaches. Just your ARR broken down the way it should be. What's driving your ARR right now, new logos or expansion?