Churn rate

Churn is a monthly row for most companies, because one week rarely holds enough cancellations to mean anything. What belongs on the weekly Scorecard is whatever sits in front of it: accounts flagged at risk, check-in calls held, onboarding milestones hit on time. Those move every week and they are what a Monday meeting can act on.

Churn is the number most often quietly redefined. Move a canceled account into a paused category, or count logos instead of dollars, and the rate improves without a single customer staying. Fix the definition in writing before the row goes on the board, including how downgrades are treated, and change it only at a quarter boundary.

Worked example: A software company with nine hundred accounts reported monthly churn of one and a half percent and treated it as healthy. Measured on revenue rather than accounts it was four percent, because the accounts leaving were the large ones while the small ones stayed. The board carried both rows after that, and only the revenue one carried a goal.

Sources: klipfolio.com/kpis/saas; kpi.org/kpi-basics