Build a Cohort Revenue Retention Report

Build a SaaS cohort retention report — revenue by signup cohort, retained revenue by month, and net revenue retention percentage — using repeating rows.
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For SaaS and subscription businesses, cohort retention is the most important diagnostic in the model — it answers whether customers are staying and expanding. This tutorial walks through building a Workday OfficeConnect cohort revenue retention report with one row per signup cohort, retained revenue across each subsequent month, and a net revenue retention (NRR) percentage at the right edge.

What you’ll build: A triangular cohort matrix showing each signup cohort’s starting revenue across its starting month and every subsequent month, with NRR computed at the 12-month mark.

What you’ll need:

Step 1 — Lay out the cohort grid

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Add the period columns On a blank sheet, label B1 M0, C1 M1, D1 M2, and so on through M12. These represent months since the cohort started — not calendar months. They’re the column dimension of the cohort triangle.
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Add cohort labels in column A In column A, list each cohort by its start month: 2024-01, 2024-02, 2024-03, etc. Each row is one signup cohort.

Step 2 — Populate the M0 column

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Drag the cohort dimension into a row Click B2 (the M0 cell for the first cohort). In the Reporting pane, drag the Subscription Revenue account in, then filter it on the Signup Cohort = 2024-01 dimension value and the time context set to that cohort’s start month (January 2024).
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Repeat for every cohort For B3, B4, B5, etc., do the same — each cohort row filters on its own cohort and resolves against its own start month for M0. This is the starting revenue baseline for each cohort.

Step 3 — Build the retention columns

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Add M1 for each cohort In C2 (M1 for the 2024-01 cohort), drag the same Subscription Revenue account, filter on Signup Cohort = 2024-01, but advance the time context one month (February 2024). This is revenue from the 2024-01 cohort one month after signup.
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Use repeating rows to scale Rather than building this matrix cohort by cohort manually, configure the row block as a repeating row scoped on the Signup Cohort dimension, with each column resolving to cohort start month + N. OfficeConnect generates one row per cohort on refresh. The full pattern is covered in Repeating Reports.
For admins & power users The cohort grid is triangular — recent cohorts only have a few months of history. Use conditional formatting to color empty future cells light gray so reviewers can tell at a glance which zeros are simply “not yet.”

Step 4 — Compute retention percentages

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Add a second cohort block as percentages Below the dollar matrix, repeat the same cohort structure but in each cell write =B2/$B2 (the cohort’s M-N revenue divided by its M0 revenue). Format as percentage. This is the retention curve — typically starting at 100% for M0 and trending up (expansion) or down (churn) over time.
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Add the NRR column In a column labeled NRR @ M12, write =M2/$B2 for each cohort (M12 revenue divided by M0 revenue). Above 100% is net expansion; below 100% is net contraction. Healthy SaaS businesses target 110%+ NRR.

Step 5 — Refresh and analyze

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Refresh and read the diagonals Click Refresh. The matrix populates. The diagonals show how cohorts of similar maturity compare — if recent cohorts have steeper drop-offs than older ones, retention is deteriorating.
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Add an average row Below the matrix, add an Average row that computes a weighted average retention percentage per month-since-signup across all cohorts. This is the summary retention curve for the business.

Result

You now have a cohort retention report that surfaces subscription health in one view. Investors get the NRR percentage they ask for, the board gets the retention curve, and FP&A spots churn or expansion patterns months before top-line revenue reveals them.

Next steps

Last modified May 19, 2026: Rename 'Get Started' section to 'Wiki' site-wide (6ebea16d)