AdvancedMetric 22 of 35
Quick Ratio
Growth efficiency: dollars added per dollar lost.
How many dollars of new and expansion MRR you add for every dollar you lose. Popularised by Mamoon Hamid; one of the cleanest single-number reads of SaaS momentum.
Formula
Quick Ratio = (New + Expansion) ÷ (Contraction + Churn)Worked example
(New 5,000 + Expansion 1,500) ÷ (Contraction 400 + Churn 2,100) = 6,500 ÷ 2,500 = 2.6.
Benchmark
TargetExcellent
> 4
Healthy
2–4
Stalling
< 1
Why it matters
Quick Ratio above 4 means you're winning fast and losing slow — that's the profile of a company that can deploy capital aggressively. Below 1 means you're net-shrinking your installed base. It's a forward-looking indicator: companies tend to follow their quick ratio for 6–12 months before MRR catches up.
Common mistakes
- Computing on customer counts instead of MRR (different signal).
- Smoothing by using TTM — the metric is most useful month-by-month to catch turning points.
- Treating zero-loss months as a normal ratio — call out the denominator instead of dividing by zero.
Tracked in FlowMRR
Retention → Quick Ratio card, shown right next to NRR/GRR.
