Monthly Metrics Update Template for Indie SaaS

Whether it goes to investors, to your audience, or just to a note you reread next year, a monthly update is easier to write when the numbers are already sitting in a sheet. This guide picks six numbers, gives the Google Sheets formula for each, and ends with a short text template you can fill in.

It builds on the subscriptions table from How to track MRR across Gumroad, Polar and Lemon Squeezy. If you haven't set that up yet, start there. We'll assume a Subs tab with these columns:

Put the first day of the month you're reporting in M1 (for example 2026-09-01) and the first day of the next month in N1: =EDATE(M1, 1).

The six numbers and their formulas

1. MRR. Recurring revenue from active subscriptions, with longer plans divided down to a month.

=SUMIFS(Subs!I:I, Subs!J:J, "active")

This is MRR as of today. For a past month, keep last month's update and compare, or use the start-of-month formula below.

2. Net new MRR. How much MRR changed this month. See the next section for the breakdown.

3. Churn. Report logo churn (the share of subscribers who left) and revenue churn (the share of MRR that left). They can tell very different stories: losing two big customers barely moves logo churn but can be a large share of MRR.

Subscribers active at the start of the month:

=SUMPRODUCT((Subs!G2:G<>"") * (Subs!G2:G<M1) * (Subs!J2:J<>"trial") * (((Subs!H2:H="") + (Subs!H2:H>=M1)) > 0))

Subscribers who ended during the month:

=COUNTIFS(Subs!H2:H, ">="&M1, Subs!H2:H, "<"&N1, Subs!G2:G, "<"&M1)

Logo churn is the second divided by the first. For revenue churn, swap the counts for sums of column I (the live MRR guide has both versions).

4. ARPU. Average revenue per user: MRR divided by the number of active subscribers.

=SUMIFS(Subs!I:I, Subs!J:J, "active") / COUNTIFS(Subs!J:J, "active")

5. Refunds. Total refunded in the month. With a Refunds tab where column B is the refund date and column C the amount:

=SUMIFS(Refunds!C:C, Refunds!B:B, ">="&M1, Refunds!B:B, "<"&N1)

Report it next to revenue for the month, so a high-refund month doesn't hide inside a good sales number.

6. Top product. The product with the most MRR:

=INDEX(QUERY(Subs!A:J, "select C, sum(I) where J = 'active' group by C order by sum(I) desc", 1), 2, 1)

New, expansion, churned and net new MRR

Net new MRR is MRR at the end of the month minus MRR at the start. It's worth splitting into parts, because "+$40" means something very different when it's +$200 new and −$160 churned.

• New MRR: monthly amount from subscriptions that started in the month.

  =SUMIFS(Subs!I:I, Subs!G:G, ">="&M1, Subs!G:G, "<"&N1, Subs!J:J, "<>trial")
  

• Churned MRR: monthly amount from subscriptions that ended in the month.

  =SUMIFS(Subs!I2:I, Subs!H2:H, ">="&M1, Subs!H2:H, "<"&N1, Subs!G2:G, "<"&M1)
  

• Expansion (and contraction) MRR: customers who changed plans. A one-row-per-subscription table only shows today's price, so it can't see an upgrade on its own. Either keep last month's copy of the Subs tab and compare amounts by subscription, or leave expansion out and say so in the update. Don't guess it.

• Net new MRR = new + expansion − contraction − churned. As a check, it should equal end-of-month MRR minus start-of-month MRR.

Writing the update: a short text template

Keep the numbers on one tab and the words next to them. Here's a filled example. All numbers are example data.

September 2026 update

• MRR: $1,240 (Aug: $1,180)
• Net new MRR: +$60 (new +$150, churned −$90; expansion not tracked)
• Logo churn: 3 of 118 subscribers (2.5%); revenue churn: $90 of $1,180 (7.6%)
• ARPU: $10.16
• Refunds: $38 on $1,610 of revenue
• Top product: Pro plan, $820 MRR

What happened: one or two sentences on the biggest change. What's next: the one thing you'll do in October. Ask: anything you need from the reader.

To fill it automatically, reference the cells: ="MRR: "&TEXT(B2,"$#,##0")&" (Aug: "&TEXT(C2,"$#,##0")&")".

Building in public with real numbers

If you post your update publicly, two habits keep it trustworthy:

• Use the same definitions every month. If you count past-due subscriptions in MRR in one update and not the next, the change in your number is the definition, not the business. Write your rules down once (ours are on How we calculate MRR and churn) and link to them.
• Report revenue churn next to logo churn. It's the number that shows when your best customers leave.

Filling it automatically

The template is free to copy. The tedious part is keeping the Subs and Refunds tabs current.

RevenueSheet is a Google Sheets add-on that will fill them from your stores at launch. It backfills full history from Lemon Squeezy, Polar, Gumroad and Stripe (plus CSV import) into Orders, Subscriptions, Customers and Refunds tabs, and builds a Dashboard tab with MRR, net revenue, churn and revenue by product. It normalizes quarterly, six-month, yearly and two-year plans to monthly, and by default counts only active subscriptions in MRR. Named ranges such as rs_subs and rs_mrr_monthly let the formulas above point straight at its tabs.

The Free plan covers one source with one-click refresh at launch. Once paid plans open, Pro ($9/mo) adds all four sources (one store per source) plus CSV import and scheduled refresh (hourly, every 6 hours, daily or weekly) at launch. RevenueSheet is pending Google Workspace Marketplace review; join the launch list to hear when it's live.