Total Contracted MRR
The total normalized monthly value of every binding customer contract you hold, built as a waterfall from last month's balance.
◆ Currency
Formula
Built from
What it measures
The sum of the normalized monthly value of every live, binding contract as of month-end — what customers are committed to pay you, not what cash has landed or what accounting has recognized. One-time fees, services, and usage overages are excluded; only the standing recurring obligation counts.
Why it matters
Contracted MRR is the committed-revenue base your forecast and your board deck stand on. It tells you, in real time, whether you are building or shrinking your subscription footprint — before a single dollar is recognized on the income statement. Because it captures the full value of a contract the moment it becomes binding, it leads recognized revenue and cash, making it the earliest reliable signal of growth or trouble.
How to read it
Read Contracted MRR as a trend, not a snapshot, and always against the prior month and your plan. Rising means new and expansion bookings are outrunning downsells and churn; flat or falling means the leaks are bigger than the wins, even if cash still looks healthy. Break the move into its components — $20K new offset by $20K churn nets to zero but signals an unstable base. Compare month-over-month for momentum and year-over-year to strip out seasonality.
What good looks like
Good
Contracted MRR growing month over month on new acquisition and expansion, with upsells plus new comfortably outpacing downsells plus churn.
Watch
Growth flat or leaning on a few large contracts; churn or downsells creeping up relative to new wins; seasonality masking the underlying trend.
Bad
Contracted MRR declining, with churn and downgrades outrunning new and expansion bookings; new wins can't replace customer losses.
Watch-outs
- Booking a contract at its full value. A $36K annual deal is $3K of Contracted MRR, not $36K — always normalize to the monthly equivalent (TCV ÷ term in months) or the metric spikes on signing and collapses at renewal.
- Confusing contracted with recognized. Contracted MRR is the committed obligation the day a deal is signed; recognized revenue depends on ASC 606 delivery. Reporting one as the other distorts both your growth rate and your income statement.
- Double-counting reductions. Downsell MRR and Churned MRR are both outflows — if your billing system already nets them into one number, don't subtract both or you'll understate the base.
- Ignoring the components. A flat balance can hide $20K of new MRR cancelled out by $20K of churn — a churning, unstable book of business. Always read the waterfall, not just the total.
Worked example
Hypothetical
Open May at $500K Contracted MRR. You sign $50K of new contracts, existing customers expand by $20K, one downgrades by $5K, and you lose $15K to churn. Closing May Contracted MRR is $550K — your committed monthly base heading into June.
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 Total Contracted MRR above.
- CMRR Alternate cut of the parent metric
- CMRR_PERCENTAGE As a percentage