The five SaaS metrics worth charting (and the ones that are noise)
SaaS dashboards fill up with metrics because every tool ships its own. Five of them carry almost all of the signal, and each has a chart type that fits it naturally.
1. MRR movement — waterfall
New, expansion, contraction and churn walking from last month's MRR to this month's. A single MRR line hides the fact that flat growth can mean nothing happened or that a lot of churn was exactly offset by a lot of new business.
2. Net revenue retention — cohort lines
One line per cohort, indexed to 100 at month zero. Cohorts that climb above 100 tell you expansion is real; a single blended NRR number can hide a very good recent cohort carrying three bad ones.
3. Gross margin — plain trend
Boring and essential. Hosting and support costs creep, and margin erosion is invisible in absolute revenue charts until it is a problem.
4. CAC payback — bar per channel
Months to recover acquisition cost, one bar per channel. This is the chart that ends most arguments about where marketing budget should go.
5. Burn multiple — number with history
Net burn divided by net new ARR. A single number, but plotted over six quarters it shows whether growth is getting more or less expensive.
- Noise: pageviews, raw signups, total registered users, NPS on a dashboard.
- Signal: anything that changes a decision about spend or pricing.
If a chart has never changed a decision in two quarters, it is decoration. Delete it and give the space to one of these five.
Frequently asked
What chart shows MRR growth best?
A waterfall of new, expansion, contraction and churn. It shows both the net result and the gross movement that produced it.
Is NPS worth putting on a dashboard?
Rarely. It moves slowly, it is noisy at small sample sizes, and it almost never changes a decision on the timescale a dashboard is read.