NRR and GRR reporting you can defend in the board meeting

NRR vs GRR, and why the definition matters

Net revenue retention (NRR) is the share of last year’s recurring revenue you still have today, counting expansion. It can go above 100%. Gross revenue retention (GRR) counts only what you lost to contraction and churn, so it never goes above 100%. NRR tells you whether the base grows on its own; GRR tells you how leaky it is. Read together, they separate a healthy customer base from a business that only grows by replacing the customers it loses.

Both are easy to inflate by accident. The most common mistake is letting customers signed during the year into the calculation: they have no opening ARR, so they inflate both ratios and hide churn. OneVio avoids that by design.

How OneVio calculates NRR and GRR

An account counts as an existing customer when its start date is more than 365 days ago. Only existing customers count towards NRR and GRR. Over the trailing 12 months, OneVio adds up three movements for them:

• Expansion: ARR increases, from renewals at a higher price or ARR changes on the account.
• Contraction: ARR decreases from the same sources.
• Churn: the ARR of accounts lost in the window.

Opening ARR is rebuilt from today’s ARR by undoing those movements. Then NRR = (opening − churn − contraction + expansion) ÷ opening, and GRR = (opening − churn − contraction) ÷ opening. Want to try the formula on your own numbers first? Use the free NRR calculator.

The 12-month ARR bridge

The dashboard shows the same figures as an ARR bridge: opening ARR from existing customers a year ago, plus new business, plus expansion, minus contraction, minus churn, equals closing ARR today. New business is the current ARR of customers signed inside the window, with their first-year upsells included, which is the usual convention. A customer signed and lost inside the window nets to zero and is counted separately.

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Every figure is in US dollars. Each account bills in its own currency, Indian rupees, US dollars or Philippine pesos, and OneVio converts to USD with the rates set in Settings. Account pages keep the native amount, so a CSM in Bengaluru still sees the rupee contract value.

Churn analysis, cohorts and trends

Retention numbers raise the next question: why? The Analytics section answers it with:

• Churn analysis: lost ARR and logos broken down by churn reason, CSM or tier, or by quarter over the last eight quarters.
• Cohort retention: accounts grouped by the quarter they started (by year for anything older than three years), showing what share of logos and ARR survived each quarter since.
• Trends: OneVio takes a snapshot each month. Total ARR, NRR and GRR appear as monthly trend lines once two snapshots exist, and as quarterly averages once two quarters have snapshots.
• Renewal outcomes by quarter: ARR renewed against ARR churned, with the win rate.

Who uses it

Founders and CS leaders take NRR, GRR and the bridge into board and investor updates. Finance gets one USD figure with the conversion rates written down. CS managers use churn reasons and cohorts to decide where to act, then use renewal management to act on it.

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