Want to understand exactly where your SaaS revenue comes from and where it goes? A revenue waterfall model is the clearest way to visualize it.
Here's what I built:
A 6-tab Google Sheet that automatically breaks down revenue by:
- New MRR (new customers)
- Expansion MRR (upsells)
- Churn MRR (cancellations)
- Contraction MRR (downgrades)
The dashboard shows:
- Total revenue YTD
- Growth rate
- Churn rate
- Net revenue retention
You can model 3 scenarios (base/optimistic/conservative) side-by-side.
Why this matters for founders: Investors love seeing a waterfall chart. It shows you understand the unit economics of your business. I've seen this template help founders raise seed rounds faster.
If you want a ready-to-use copy with pre-filled formulas and sample data, I just published it on Gumroad: Revenue Waterfall Model — Google Sheets ($29). It takes 10 minutes to set up with your own numbers.
But you can also build this yourself using the structure I described above. The key formulas are:
- Net New MRR = New + Expansion - Churn - Contraction
- Growth Rate = (Net New / Starting MRR) * 100
- NRR = (Starting + Expansion - Churn - Contraction) / Starting * 100
Happy building!
Top comments (1)
solid skeleton. the one thing i'd add: keep gross churn and net churn as separate lines instead of a single churn number. strong expansion MRR can fully mask a churn problem when they're netted together, and you won't catch it until a flat month where expansion dips and the churn you'd been hiding shows up all at once.
good call keeping new MRR out of the NRR formula too, that trips a lot of people up. NRR is the one cell i'd put at the top in bold, since it tells you whether the thing grows even if you stop adding logos, and it's usually the first number an investor jumps to.