Free tool
Revenue Retention Calculator
How much of last year's revenue did you keep? Enter last year's revenue and what you lost, what shrank and what grew among existing customers to get gross and net revenue retention, the share of revenue lost and how much new business covered. It works for businesses that sell by order or by project, not only subscriptions. No sign-up, and your figures stay in your browser.
- Gross revenue retention
- Kept from last year's customers, growth not counted
- Net revenue retention
- With growth from existing customers counted
- Lost from existing customers
- €1.12m of last year's revenue: €0.62m stopped, €0.50m bought less
- Revenue in the last 12 months
- Up 1% on the previous 12 months
Last year's revenue in 100 squares
Plus growth from existing customers
- Kept
- Bought less
- Stopped buying
- Bought more
Last year's customers kept 86% of their revenue. Growth from some of them brings that to 93%.
New customers added €0.62m, so total revenue is up 1%. Without them, revenue would have fallen 7%: the gap new business had to fill.
Watch the trend: a fall of two or three points in gross retention over a year is a question for the board.
How the calculator works
Compare the last 12 months with the 12 before, customer by customer, from the invoice ledger. Every customer with revenue in the earlier period falls into one of three groups: stopped buying (lost), bought less (shrinking) or bought the same or more (growing). Customers with nothing in the earlier period are new.
- Gross revenue retention is last year's revenue, less lost and shrinking revenue, divided by last year's revenue. Growth cannot offset a loss, so it never passes 100%.
- Net revenue retention adds back growth from existing customers before dividing.
- Lost from existing customers is lost plus shrinking revenue, as a share of last year's revenue.
- Revenue in the last 12 months is last year's revenue, less lost and shrinking, plus growing and new.
In the example, an illustrative company with €8.00m of revenue lost €0.62m from customers who stopped buying and €0.50m from customers who bought less: 14% of the year before. Gross retention is 86% and net retention 93%. New customers took revenue up 1%, which hid the losses on the revenue line.
Doing this by hand means exporting two years of invoices and matching every customer. Stratavor connects read-only to Xero, QuickBooks Online, Sage, NetSuite, Deltek Vantagepoint and HubSpot, computes gross and net retention in code from the ledger every month, and names the customers who are slipping against their own history, ranked by the revenue at stake. It is not a forecasting tool. The Power BI add-on carries the same figures into Power BI.
Microsoft and Power BI are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies.
Frequently asked questions
- What is gross revenue retention?
- The share of last year's revenue that the same customers spent with you again this year, with each customer counted at no more than it spent last year. Revenue from customers who stopped buying or bought less comes off, and growth from other customers cannot make up for it, so gross retention can never be more than 100%.
- What is net revenue retention?
- The same calculation without the cap, so growth from existing customers counts. Above 100% means last year's customers together spend more than they did, before any new customer is won.
- How do I measure retention without subscriptions?
- Compare the last 12 months with the 12 before, customer by customer, from the invoice ledger. Customers who bought in the earlier period and nothing since are lost, customers who bought less are shrinking and customers who bought more are growing. New customers, with nothing in the earlier period, stay out of both measures.
- What is a good revenue retention rate?
- No single benchmark suits every business. Most published figures come from software companies with subscriptions, and businesses that sell by order or by project usually run lower. The trend matters more than any benchmark: a fall of two or three points in gross retention over a year is a question for the board, whatever total revenue says.
- Why do new customers not count?
- Retention measures what happened to the revenue you already had. Counting new customers would let a strong year for sales hide losses among existing ones, which is exactly what the measure exists to show.
- Are my figures stored?
- No. The calculation runs in your browser and nothing is sent to Stratavor. A copied link carries the figures, so share it only with people who should see them. With analytics consent, we count that the calculator was used, without your figures.
- How does Stratavor help?
- Stratavor connects read-only to Xero, QuickBooks Online, Sage, NetSuite, Deltek Vantagepoint and HubSpot, works out gross and net revenue retention from the invoices every month, and lists the customers who are slipping against their own history, ranked by the revenue at stake. The Power BI add-on carries the same figures into Power BI.
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