For SaaS Teams
Power BI custom visuals for saas
MRR movement, cohort retention and net revenue retention: the subscription views a board deck and a growth review both need.
For SaaS finance, RevOps and growth teams. AI-generated, .pbiviz output, source code yours.
By Nawaf Sharaf · Founder & Reliability Engineer · Updated
This is the team view: everything saas teams build in Power BI, from visuals to page templates. For a single dashboard job in depth (its visuals, DAX measures and prompts), jump to the 3 saas dashboard jobs below.
SaaS reporting is subscription arithmetic. Every month the team explains how recurring revenue moved (new, expansion, contraction, churn, reactivation), how each signup cohort retains, and which plans and segments drive net revenue retention. The data usually lands in Power BI from a billing system and a CRM, modelled as subscriptions with start and end dates and monthly snapshots. Native Power BI handles totals and trends, and a matrix can hold a cohort table. What it doesn't draw natively is the MRR bridge with each movement as its own step, a cohort heatmap where each row is a signup month and each cell the share still paying, or a plan-level view that shows expansion and churn side by side.
VizForge generates those as Power BI custom visuals. Describe the movement categories in the order your finance team uses, the cohort grid with the retention measure that drives the colour, and how many months to show, and the generator writes, type-checks and packages the .pbiviz. It works on top of the measures you already trust, so the definition of churn or of active customer stays in your model. For the page, the Design Studio has a SaaS metrics template with MRR, churn and retention slots, downloadable with sample data.
What saas teams need
- MRR movement needs a bridge with five or six categories in a fixed order; a stacked column hides which step moved
- Cohort retention is a triangle: native matrices can show it, but colour scales and blank future cells take manual work
- Board decks and growth reviews use different definitions (logo vs revenue churn); the visual must not bake one in
- Plans, segments and currencies multiply the views; one flexible visual beats ten nearly identical pages
- Native Power BI has no cohort heatmap visual (as of November 2026)
Featured visuals for saas dashboards
Each card links to a full reference page with example prompts, data shape, and DAX measures. Generate any of these in under 5 minutes by describing what you want — no code, no developer time.
MRR bridge: start, new, expansion, contraction, churn, end.
Example: “MRR waterfall for the selected month: starting MRR, new, expansion, reactivation, contraction, churn, ending MRR. Gains teal, losses red, to…”
Retention cohorts by signup month.
Example: “Cohort heatmap: signup month on rows, months since signup on columns (0-12), cell colour by revenue retention %, future cells left blank, la…”
Net revenue retention with trend.
Example: “KPI card for trailing-12-month net revenue retention, target 110%, sparkline of the last 12 months, delta vs last quarter.”
Plan movement: upgrades and downgrades between plans.
Example: “Sankey of customers moving between plans from start to end of quarter (Free, Starter, Pro, Enterprise, Churned), link width by MRR.”
Plan-level MRR vs target.
Example: “Bullet chart per plan: current MRR bar, quarterly target line, last quarter as a marker.”
Spread of contract value by segment.
Example: “Box plot of annual contract value by customer segment, outliers as dots, median labelled.”
Try one of these prompts
Click any prompt below to start a new visual. The prompt opens in your VizForge workspace pre-filled — edit it before generating, or generate as-is.
Example VizForge prompt
MRR movement waterfall with New, Expansion, Reactivation, Contraction and Churn between starting and ending MRR, values in thousands, month picked by slicer.
Example VizForge prompt
Revenue retention cohort heatmap: signup month rows, months 0-18 columns, colour by % of starting MRR retained, blank cells for months that haven't happened yet.
Example VizForge prompt
Plan migration Sankey from start-of-quarter plan to end-of-quarter plan including a Churned node, link width by MRR.
FAQ
Do I need monthly MRR snapshots in the model?
For a movement bridge, yes or an equivalent measure per movement category. The visual draws what your measures return; it doesn't compute churn from raw invoices.
Can the cohort heatmap use logo retention instead of revenue?
Yes. Bind whichever measure you want; describe the label in the prompt so the legend says customers rather than revenue.
Will it work with a currency slicer?
Yes. Format strings and currency come from your measures, and the visual re-renders on every slicer change.
Is there a free SaaS dashboard template?
Yes. The SaaS metrics template in the Design Studio has MRR, churn and retention slots and downloads as a PBIP project with sample data.
Ready to ship your saas dashboard this week?
5 free credits on signup. No card required. .pbiviz output is yours forever.
Generate your first saas visual →Building for another team? See all teams.
SaaS dashboard jobs
Each page goes deep on one dashboard: the recommended custom visuals, the DAX measures behind them and ready-to-paste prompts.
SaaS founders, CFOs, revenue operations
Best Power BI Visuals for SaaS MetricsThe best Power BI visuals for SaaS metrics — MRR waterfall, ARR cohorts, NRR Sankey, pipeline…
CS leaders, account managers, CSM operations
Best Power BI Visuals for a Customer Success DashboardThe best Power BI visuals for customer success — health scorecards, retention cohorts, expansion Sankeys, NPS…
PMs, product analysts, growth teams
Best Power BI Visuals for Product AnalyticsThe best Power BI visuals for product analytics — feature adoption funnels, retention cohorts, user flow Sankeys,…
Free saas dashboard templates
Free Design Studio page layouts for these dashboards: background image, theme JSON and PBIP project, no signup.
SaaS template
SaaS Metrics: MRR & ChurnGlass header card, stacked KPI column, MRR movement, churn trend + cohort matrix
SaaS template
Product Analytics & Feature AdoptionPlain header, 4 bold KPIs, daily active users + activation funnel, feature-adoption bars + retention cohort matrix
Operations template
Customer SupportPlain header, gauge + 3 KPIs, trend and category bars, agent table and channel donut
Retail & e-commerce template
E-commerce PerformanceHeader band, 5 icon KPIs, full-width daily trend, three-panel bottom row
Design the page around it, free
A custom visual looks best on a designed page. The free VizForge Design Studio lays out a branded report page at Power BI’s pixel size and exports the background image, a theme JSON and a PBIP project. No signup.
Open the free Design Studio →Data sources for saas reports
Where this team's data usually lives, and how to get it into Power BI: connector status, the tables to load and KPIs with DAX.