MRR forecast

The MRR forecast projects your Monthly Recurring Revenue into the future and lets you stress-test it with three simple levers. Where the CMRR report projects only the changes you already know about (scheduled churn, planned upgrades, expiring discounts), the MRR forecast is a statistical projection: it takes the shape of your recent months and carries it forward, then lets you ask "what if we win more customers, retain more revenue, or raise prices?"

It is built to be transparent –  every baseline number comes from your own recent movements, and the whole projection is reproducible by hand.

Overview

The report has three parts:

• Three levers at the top –  New customers, Net revenue retention, and Prices.
• A chart –  your actual MRR history, a dashed baseline (what happens with no changes), and, when you move a lever, a blue scenario line.
• A table –  the period-by-period decomposition behind both lines: new business, existing MRR change, customer count, and total MRR.

The chart and the table share one timeline, so a quarter in the table lines up with the same point on the chart.

How the forecast is calculated

GrowPanel uses a customer-count model, the same approach used across the industry, rather than a raw MRR extrapolation. Two things drive your MRR forward:

1. New business –  a roughly fixed number of new customers each month, each worth your average sale price. New business does not scale with how big your book already is; your acquisition engine adds logos at a fairly steady rate.
2. Net revenue retention (NRR) –  what happens to the revenue from the customers you already have. Expansion and reactivation add to it; contraction and churn take away. NRR acts on the base, so its effect grows or shrinks as the base does.

Each month, the projection does:

Next MRR = This MRR × (monthly NRR)   +   New customers × ASP

Every input is the average of a baseline window you choose –  the last 3, 6 or 12 complete months (6 by default), set with the Baseline dropdown above the chart:

Because nothing here is hidden, you can always tie the forecast back to the numbers you already see in your MRR and movements reports.

Choosing the baseline window

The Baseline dropdown (top of the report) controls how many recent complete months the averages above are drawn from:

• Last 3 months –  tracks your current momentum. Best if you are growing (or changing) fast, since a short window is not held back by a slower past.
• Last 6 months –  the default. A balanced view that smooths month-to-month noise.
• Last 12 months –  the calmest line, best for a steady business or one with lumpy months.

Every lever's baseline value (and the whole projection) recomputes from the window you pick, and the notes under each lever update to match ("…avg. last 3 months"). It is still a plain average you can reproduce by hand –  you are just choosing how far back it looks.

Why a steady account can trend toward a flat line

If your monthly NRR is below 100% (the base loses a little net revenue each month) and new business stays flat, the forecast will bend toward an equilibrium –  the level where the revenue you add from new business exactly balances the revenue the base loses. That is not a bug; it is the honest consequence of "flat acquisition + net churn." To model continued acceleration, raise the New customers lever to reflect a growing acquisition engine.

The levers

Each lever starts untouched at your baseline (shown beneath it, e.g. "37 customers/mo (avg. last 6 months)" –  the window follows the Baseline dropdown). Move it and the label shows the change, e.g. "37 → 48 customers/mo".

New customers

How many new customers you win each month, as a percentage change on your baseline. New MRR is that count multiplied by your ASP.

Net revenue retention

How much revenue you keep and grow from existing customers each month, in percentage points (monthly). Above 100% means the base expands on its own; below 100% means it contracts net of expansion. This single lever folds together expansion, reactivation, contraction and churn, so an expansion-led account is projected as growing rather than shrinking.

Prices

A price change applied either to new customers only (your ASP goes up, existing customers are untouched) or to all customers (a one-time step-up of the whole book, plus the higher ASP going forward). Choose which from the dropdown in the lever's heading.

Use Reset to return every lever to its baseline.

Reading the chart

• The solid line is your actual MRR history (labelled Actual MRR on hover).
• The dashed grey line is the baseline forecast –  where you land with no changes (labelled Baseline).
• The blue line appears when you move a lever –  your scenario.

The chart shows monthly points by default; use the interval dropdown (top right of the chart) to switch to quarter or year. The horizon dropdown switches between a 1, 2, 3 and 5-year view, just like the CMRR report. A dashed vertical line marks where your actual history ends and the forecast begins. The summary strip below the chart reads out where the scenario lands in 1, 2 and 3 years and at the end of the horizon.

Reading the table

The table decomposes every period –  both history and forecast –  into:

• New business –  new MRR won that period (new customers × ASP).
• Existing MRR change –  the net movement on the customers you already had (expansion and reactivation, minus churn and contraction). It does not include new business. A negative figure here alongside rising total MRR simply means growth is driven by new business faster than the base is churning.
• Customers –  projected number of paying customers at period end.
• Total MRR –  the resulting MRR.
• Growth –  the period-over-period change in total MRR.

Because the table starts at the same date as the chart, you can read the actual decomposition of your recent quarters and then follow it straight into the projection.

Currency, segments and filters

The forecast honours the same filters as every other report –  and that is more powerful than it sounds: you can forecast any slice of your business in isolation. Narrow to a single plan, a country or region, a segment, or a custom variable, and the whole projection recomputes for just that slice –  the baseline rates are recalculated from the filtered movements, so the levers and the chart all reflect it. Switch base currency the same way. It is the same filtering you already use elsewhere, so there is nothing new to learn.

Frequently asked questions

My growth is accelerating –  why does the forecast look too conservative? The baseline is a trailing average, and a trailing average deliberately lags a fast-changing business: if you are growing exponentially, the months behind you are slower than where you are today, so the starting point sits below your current trajectory. Two fixes, in order: first, set the Baseline dropdown to last 3 months so the average tracks your current momentum instead of a slower past. Then, if you want to go further, raise the New customers lever (and Net revenue retention if retention is improving) to the rate you are actually running at now. Read the baseline as "where recent momentum lands," and the levers as "where I actually think we are going."

New business is a fixed number of customers each month –  but we add customers faster as we get bigger. Is that not wrong? It is a deliberate simplification, and for many SaaS businesses it is a good one: a sales team or paid channel tends to add a roughly steady number of logos per month regardless of how big the book already is. New business is priced at your ASP and does not scale with your current MRR. If your acquisition genuinely scales with size –  strong referral or virality loops, or a sales team you grow in step with revenue –  then a fixed count understates you. Model it with the New customers lever, and revisit the baseline each quarter as your true run-rate climbs. This is the model's main honest limitation; we chose it over a compounding-acquisition curve because it is transparent and hard to accidentally inflate.

Why does a healthy business sometimes trend toward a flat line? See Why a steady account can trend toward a flat line above –  flat acquisition plus monthly retention below 100% drives toward an equilibrium. It is arithmetic, not pessimism. Raise New customers or Net revenue retention to model continued acceleration.

It does not match my other tool or my board model. Why? Because it is a transparent trailing-average projection, not a curve fitted to your history. Every figure ties back to your own movements, so any difference comes down to the baseline window (3, 6 or 12 months) and the assumptions each tool makes. Use the table to see exactly where the two diverge.

Does it handle seasonality? No. The projection is smooth –  it will not reproduce a December spike or a summer dip. If your business is strongly seasonal, read the forecast as a trend line through the seasonality rather than a month-accurate prediction.

I just raised prices or cut churn –  why is it not in the forecast yet? A recent step-change is diluted by the baseline average, so it barely moves the starting point. Shorten the Baseline window to 3 months so it weighs recent months more, or apply the change immediately with the Prices or Net revenue retention lever instead of waiting for the average to catch up.

How far out should I trust it? The near term –  the next few quarters –  is the most reliable. The further out you go, the more small assumption differences compound, so treat the two- and three-year figures as directional rather than precise.

Related

• CMRR –  a forward projection of only the committed changes you already know about.
• Monthly growth goal –  set the target you are steering this forecast toward.
• MRR and MRR movements –  the actuals the baseline is derived from.