New Contracted Monthly Recurring Revenue
Monthly recurring revenue from customers signing their first binding subscription contract in the period.
◆ Currency
Formula
Built from
What it measures
The sum of normalized monthly recurring revenue (TCV ÷ contract term in months) for every customer who signs their first binding subscription contract during the period. Only customers with a non-cancellable contractual commitment count — month-to-month agreements, pilots, and free trials are excluded. Recognized as a positive inflow in the CMRR waterfall.
Why it matters
You track New CMRR separately from New MRR to isolate your highest-value, lowest-churn cohort: customers who commit to a contract. Boards and CFOs treat it as the gold-standard acquisition signal because contracted revenue is locked in and predictable. Sales leaders read it as the velocity and quality of enterprise and mid-market closures, and it underpins CAC-payback math, where you assume the customer stays for the full contract term. Unlike New MRR, which lumps in subscription-only and month-to-month logos, New CMRR shows only contracted bookings and feeds the CMRR waterfall.
How to read it
Read New CMRR as a trend, month-over-month and quarter-over-quarter, not as a single number. Rising New CMRR means acquisition momentum in your contracted base; a sequential decline means sales are slowing or revenue is drifting toward non-contracted deals. Always compare it to Starting CMRR to see what fraction of your opening contracted base is being replaced by fresh bookings each period. Pair it with New MRR, too: if New MRR is strong but New CMRR is weak, you're winning subscription-only or month-to-month logos rather than committed ones. Segment by tier and geography — enterprise New CMRR (lumpy, few large deals) tells a different story than SMB New CMRR (steady, many small deals).
What good looks like
Good
New CMRR grows month-over-month and sustains a healthy share of Starting CMRR, showing consistent new contracted acquisition flowing into your base.
Watch
New CMRR is flat or declining sequentially, or makes up only a small fraction of Starting CMRR — investigate pipeline health, sales-cycle length, or deal compression.
Bad
New CMRR is shrinking or near zero relative to Starting CMRR — new contracted bookings can't drive growth, signaling broken acquisition or a drift away from contract-based revenue.
Watch-outs
- Counting month-to-month or subscription-only new customers as New CMRR. Only binding contract signings count — free trials, pilots, and month-to-month commitments belong in New MRR. Mixing them inflates your contracted growth trajectory.
- Including upsells or migrations as new contracted revenue. If an existing customer upgrades or moves tiers, that's Upsell CMRR, not New CMRR. Only truly new logos with zero prior contracted MRR count.
- Counting signature date instead of go-live date. A contract signed in June but activated in July belongs in July's New CMRR — recognize it when the customer is live and the term begins, not when ink dries.
- Skipping contract-term normalization. A $120K 3-year deal is $40K/year, or $3.3K MRR — not $120K. Always divide TCV by the term in months, or you'll inflate New CMRR on signing and create a phantom cliff at renewal.
Worked example
Hypothetical
In July, three enterprise contracts go live, all new to your contracted base: Alpha signs $120K over 1 year ($10K MRR), Beta signs $180K over 2 years ($7.5K MRR), and Gamma signs $60K over 1 year ($5K MRR). July New CMRR is $22.5K. In August, only Delta goes live ($72K over 1 year = $6K MRR), so August New CMRR is $6K. The drop reflects the sales pipeline, not churn of July's cohort — those customers are still live and now sit in Total CMRR.
Variants & windows
The same metric re-expressed by a mechanical transform — a trailing window, a growth rate, a per-unit scaling, or a book/segment cut. Each is computed from New Contracted Monthly Recurring Revenue above.
- New CMRR New