Starting Contracted MRR
Your contracted recurring revenue opening balance — the prior period's closing Contracted MRR carried forward as this period's committed baseline.
◆ Currency
Formula
Built from
What it measures
Starting CMRR is your contracted-MRR opening balance — the committed monthly value you carried into the period from signed contracts. It is a direct carry-forward of last period's closing Total Contracted MRR, not a fresh calculation. It anchors the bookings waterfall and tells you what recurring revenue was already on the books before this period's new wins, upsells, downgrades, and churn moved the number.
Why it matters
You need a clean opening position because every CMRR movement only makes sense in context. Finance reads Starting CMRR to anchor the bridge from last period to this one and to reconcile where new bookings, expansion, and churn swing the needle. Leadership reads it as the momentum you entered the period with. And because contracted MRR is committed-but-not-yet-earned revenue, this baseline is what shapes cash runway and the guidance you give the board.
How to read it
Read Starting CMRR as a trend, and always against one number: last period's *closing* CMRR. By definition they must match exactly — if they don't, you have a data-integrity problem, not a business event. Month over month, a rising Starting CMRR means your prior period's net adds stuck and you opened richer; flat or falling means churn and downgrades quietly outran new bookings and expansion. Pair it with this period's closing CMRR to see the motion (e.g., opened $500K, closed $555K = the period added $55K of net committed revenue).
What good looks like
Good
Starting CMRR rises each period because prior bookings, net expansion, and retention outran churn — you open richer than you opened last time.
Watch
Starting CMRR flat or drifting down period over period; a sign last period's net adds stalled or churn quietly caught up to new wins.
Bad
Starting CMRR dropping sharply or below its recent run-rate, signaling major logo losses or failed renewals that threaten committed revenue and cash.
Watch-outs
- Treating Starting CMRR as earned revenue. Contracted MRR is committed, not yet recognized under ASC 606 — it shapes cash and guidance, but it is not income-statement revenue.
- Reading it as ARR. Starting CMRR is a monthly figure; multiply by 12 only when you explicitly need the annualized equivalent, and never mix the two in the same chart.
- Restating it after the period opens. Starting CMRR is locked once the prior period closes; any correction belongs in the prior period's closing CMRR and then flows forward — patching it directly breaks the waterfall.
- Double-counting the base. New CMRR is incremental on top of Starting CMRR; adding them yields closing CMRR. Counting the carried-forward book as new bookings inflates growth.
Worked example
Hypothetical
June's Contracted MRR closed at $500K, so July opens with $500K Starting CMRR. During July you book $75K of new contracts and lose $20K to churn, closing July at $555K — which in turn becomes August's Starting 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 Starting Contracted MRR above.
- Starting CMRR Starting