What is Committed Monthly Recurring Revenue (CMRR)?

Committed monthly recurring revenue is MRR corrected for commitments that are already certain but have not happened yet. A customer who submitted their cancellation last week is still in this month's MRR. A contract signed to start next quarter is not. CMRR moves both into the number, so it reflects what the business is actually committed to rather than what it happens to be billing today.

What Is Committed MRR?

CMRR takes current MRR and adjusts it by every contractually certain future change:

• Add signed contracts with a future start date
• Add upgrades already agreed but not yet in effect
• Subtract cancellations submitted but not yet effective
• Subtract downgrades scheduled for the next renewal
• Subtract non-renewals you have been notified of

What it never includes is anything probabilistic. A deal in late-stage negotiation is not committed. A customer you expect to churn is not committed. CMRR is a certainty metric, and the moment forecasts leak into it, it stops being one.

How Do You Calculate CMRR?

CMRR = Current MRR + Contracted future increases − Known scheduled decreases

A worked example:

• Current MRR: $120,000
• Signed contracts starting next month: $9,000
• Upgrades agreed, effective at next renewal: $3,000
• Cancellations submitted, effective at period end: $6,000
• Scheduled downgrades: $2,000

CMRR = $120,000 + $9,000 + $3,000 − $6,000 − $2,000 = $124,000

MRR says $120,000 and rising. CMRR says $124,000 and already accounted for. The difference is information you had all along but were not reporting.

Why Does CMRR Matter?

It removes lag from your reporting. Standard MRR is backward-looking by construction. A quarter where several large accounts have given notice looks completely healthy in MRR right up until the month the cancellations land.

It is the number boards and acquirers ask for. In a diligence process, "what is committed?" is a sharper question than "what did you bill?", and a business that can answer it from its billing system rather than a spreadsheet looks materially better run.

It makes hiring and spend decisions safer. Planning against MRR that includes $6,000 of revenue you know is leaving is how teams get over-hired.

What Is a Good CMRR?

CMRR has no benchmark range, because it is a level rather than a ratio. What is worth watching is the relationship between CMRR and MRR:

• CMRR above MRR means more revenue is contracted than currently billed - healthy forward momentum.
• CMRR roughly equal to MRR is normal for self-serve businesses with little contractual scheduling.
• CMRR below MRR is the warning. Known departures exceed known arrivals, and the current MRR figure is temporarily flattering you.

Track the ratio over time rather than the absolute figure. A CMRR/MRR ratio drifting below 1.0 for consecutive months is an early churn signal that MRR alone will not surface for another quarter.

How Do You Improve CMRR?

Get cancellations recorded when they are communicated, not when they take effect. CMRR is only as accurate as the notice you capture.

Schedule upgrades rather than leaving them informal. An agreed expansion that exists only in an email thread cannot enter CMRR.

Push renewals to longer terms. Multi-year and annual commitments convert speculative revenue into committed revenue, which is the whole point of the metric.

Shorten the gap between signature and start date. Contracted revenue that starts in six months is committed but not yet earning.

How Do You Track CMRR?

Chartsy reads the scheduling data your payment provider already holds - Stripe subscription schedules, scheduled cancellations, cancel_at dates and future-dated plan changes, and the Paddle equivalents - so the adjustments CMRR requires come from the billing system rather than a manually maintained sheet. Anything agreed outside the billing system still needs to be recorded there before it counts.