If you’re a SaaS founder or finance lead getting ready for a fundraise, a board meeting, or even just a tougher set of questions from your investors, there’s a simple truth: they want the same small set of SaaS Metrics, reported the same way, every month.
Not twenty dashboards. Not a story that changes depending on who’s asking. A clean, repeatable pack that makes growth, retention, and efficiency obvious at a glance.
This guide sets out the core numbers investors expect, with plain-English definitions, simple formulas, and practical “what good looks like” guidance based on the most recent market data available (late 2024 to 2025 reporting, which is the closest proxy to 2026 benchmarks). Consult EFC helps SaaS teams get these metrics clean, consistent, and investor-ready, so you can spend less time arguing about definitions and more time improving the business.
Start with one rule, use the same definitions and cut-off dates every month
Investors don’t need perfection, they need consistency. If your MRR moves because you changed the rules (not because the business changed), you lose trust fast.
Before you publish a single chart, lock down what “a month” means in your reporting. Choose a cut-off (for example, month-end 23:59 UTC), then keep it. Decide whether you’re reporting on invoiced revenue, billed revenue, or recognised revenue (accrual). None is “right” in isolation, but mixing them is always wrong.
You also need consistent treatment for the things that quietly distort SaaS numbers:
- Discounts (especially “first three months free” deals)
- Credits and refunds (and when they hit MRR)
- FX conversion (spot rate at invoice date vs month-end rate)
- Annual prepayments (always convert to a monthly equivalent for MRR)
- Paused subscriptions, downgrades, and proration rules
Finally, define customer start and end dates, product tiers, and what counts as active (and paying). Put it in writing, even if it’s one page.
Here’s a short list of common mistakes that break trust in a board pack:
- Mixing cash and accrual in the same metric set
- Counting pilots or trials as MRR
- Treating annual prepayments as one month of MRR
- Switching churn definitions mid-year (logo churn vs revenue churn)
- Netting off refunds sometimes, but not always
Once the rules are fixed, your monthly pack becomes comparable, and trend lines start to mean something.
The minimum data you need in place to trust the numbers
You don’t need a perfect data warehouse to produce investor-grade reporting, but you do need a reliable spine of data that ties out.
At minimum, make sure you can export (or maintain) these plain-language tables:
- A customer list (with unique IDs, start date, end date, segment)
- Subscriptions (plan, price, seat count or units, start and end dates)
- Invoices (issue date, period covered, status, currency, line items)
- Payments (paid date, amount, failed payments, write-offs)
- Cancellations and downgrades (date effective, reason if captured)
- Sales and marketing spend (media, tools, headcount, commissions)
Then add a few simple controls. Reconcile total end-of-month MRR to your invoicing or revenue basis (depending on your chosen method). Confirm customer counts match your billing system. Track a month-to-month change log so any jump in MRR has an explainable source (new, expansion, churn, pricing, FX, corrections).
If you can’t explain a change in one minute, investors will assume the worst.
The monthly revenue metrics that prove growth and retention: MRR, ARR, and NRR
Revenue metrics are where investors start, because they answer two blunt questions: “Are you growing?” and “Will it stick?”
MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue) is your recurring revenue run-rate for the month, normalised to a monthly value. Report it as an end-of-month number, then explain the movement using an MRR bridge (new, expansion, contraction, churn).
ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) is usually end-of-month MRR × 12. That’s the investor-friendly shorthand because it allows quick comparisons across businesses. The shortcut breaks when revenue is mostly usage-based or highly seasonal, so call that out early and add a note on how you normalise it.
NRR (Net Revenue Retention) tells investors whether your existing customers are growing or shrinking as a group. In plain terms, it measures how much recurring revenue you kept from the same customers, after churn, downgrades, and expansions.
For reporting cadence, keep MRR and net new movement monthly. For trends, add trailing views (a trailing 3-month and trailing 12-month view usually gives enough context without noise).
Exactly what your investor-ready MRR and ARR table should include
Investors love a one-page table because it forces discipline. The aim is to show the bridge clearly, with no mystery maths.
A practical monthly table looks like this (all values in your reporting currency):
| Metric | Amount |
|---|---|
| Start MRR | |
| New MRR | |
| Expansion MRR | |
| Contraction MRR | |
| Churned MRR | |
| Net New MRR | |
| End MRR | |
| MoM MRR growth rate | |
| ARR (End MRR × 12) |
If you have space, add a small set of supporting context (not another dashboard). Customer count, ARPA (average revenue per account), and logo churn rate can help explain the bridge in one glance.
Two rules keep this table “investor-ready”:
First, convert annual contracts into MRR (annual contract value ÷ 12, adjusted for discounts and contract term). Second, add short commentary on the two to three biggest drivers. For example, “Expansion from Tier 2 customers drove 60% of net new, churn increased due to one enterprise cancellation.”
On growth expectations, the latest available market data shows growth slows as ARR rises. Recent medians (late 2024, the closest proxy to 2026) showed around 50% YoY growth for businesses under $1m ARR, and about 25% YoY growth for $20m+ ARR. Your mileage will vary by category and NRR, but it gives you a reality check when setting a plan.
How to calculate NRR cleanly, and what to do if it is under 100%
NRR only works if it is calculated on a fixed cohort. The cohort is “customers you already had at the start of the period”.
A clean monthly method is:
- Take the list of customers active at the start of the month.
- Sum their starting MRR (this is your baseline).
- Sum the end-of-month MRR for the same customers only.
- NRR = ending cohort MRR ÷ starting cohort MRR.
Include upgrades, cross-sells, and price rises for those customers. Exclude new customers, because they are not retention.
As a rule, 100% is the line. Below 100% means your existing base is shrinking, so new sales have to work harder just to keep you flat. Many strong B2B SaaS businesses aim for 110% to 120%+ NRR, and the best performers can run higher depending on product and segment. Market reporting also shows that firms with stronger NRR grow materially faster than peers, because expansion does part of the growth work for you.
If your NRR is under 100%, don’t hide it with a different definition. Treat it like a fire alarm and explain the cause. Investors care more about the trend and the drivers than one ugly month.
The efficiency metrics that show if growth is healthy: CAC payback, gross margin, and burn multiple
Revenue tells investors what is happening. Efficiency tells them what it costs, and whether you can scale without constant fundraising.
CAC payback answers: how many months does it take to earn back what you spent to acquire customers?
Gross margin answers: how much of your revenue is left after direct delivery costs (hosting, support tied to delivery, third-party fees, and other cost of goods sold)?
Burn multiple answers: how much net cash are you burning to add each unit of recurring revenue?
These three metrics are also linked. If gross margin is weak, CAC payback gets longer. If CAC payback gets longer, burn usually rises. That’s why investors ask for all three.
Targets vary by stage, but practical expectations used in many investor conversations look like this:
- CAC payback: aim for under 12 to 18 months as a sensible range for many B2B SaaS businesses (shorter is better, and some top performers report much faster payback).
- Gross margin: SaaS often sits in a broad 70% to 90% range, depending on delivery model and infrastructure costs. Many teams treat 80%+ as a strong operating position, if calculated consistently.
- Burn multiple: common investor heuristics often look for under 1.5x as healthy, under 1x as very strong, and under 0.75x as elite, but the value is only meaningful when the inputs are clean and explained.
Be transparent about what you include. A “great” burn multiple that excludes key costs won’t survive diligence.
CAC payback in plain English, and how to avoid misleading maths
CAC payback is easy to game by accident. The most common error is mixing the wrong costs, or measuring revenue rather than gross profit.
A simple, defensible approach is:
CAC payback (months) = sales and marketing spend for the period ÷ monthly gross profit from new customers added in that period.
Sales and marketing spend should include headcount, commissions, tools, and paid media. Don’t mix in product and engineering. Don’t bury G&A in sales and marketing just because it’s convenient.
Timing matters too. Spend comes before revenue, which is why many SaaS teams use a 3-month or 6-month rolling view to smooth noisy months. If you can segment by channel or plan, do it, because a blended payback can hide a broken acquisition engine in one segment.
A quick sanity check helps you catch problems early: if payback is getting longer, look for falling win rates, ARPA dropping, ramping sales headcount too fast, or churn rising in the first 90 days.
Burn multiple and gross margin: the two numbers that explain your runway story fast
If you could only show one efficiency metric to a time-poor investor, burn multiple would be high on the list. It compresses a lot of truth into one number.
At its simplest:
Burn multiple = net cash burn ÷ net new ARR.
Net cash burn is cash out minus cash in for the month (many teams also show a quarterly average because month-to-month cash can swing). Net new ARR is the increase in ARR from recurring revenue, often calculated as net new MRR × 12.
Burn multiple becomes far more useful when you pair it with gross margin. A business with 85% gross margin can fund growth more easily than a business at 65%, even with the same headline ARR. Margin problems also tend to repeat, because they are baked into pricing, infrastructure, and support load.
Common gross margin leaks are rarely mysterious. Cloud costs creep up because usage is not controlled. Support becomes a delivery function for under-trained customers. A handful of “special” deals have heavy service expectations but SaaS pricing. Fixing margin is often less about finance and more about product limits, packaging, and customer fit.
Each month, add one short paragraph of context to your burn multiple: what drove burn (hiring, one-off costs, slower collections), what changed in spend, and what you expect next month. A clear runway story builds confidence.
Conclusion
An investor-ready monthly pack doesn’t need dozens of charts. It needs a consistent set: an MRR and ARR bridge, NRR, CAC payback, gross margin, and burn multiple, plus a short narrative on the drivers and actions.
Prioritise fixed definitions, clean cut-off dates, and trend lines that hold up over time. When the numbers move, explain why, and what you’re doing next.
If you want help turning your reporting into something you can put in front of a board or investors with confidence, Consult EFC can set up an investor-ready monthly reporting pack, tighten definitions, and add board-level commentary that stands up to diligence.
Connect with us today for a free consultation on your business and how we can help.
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