How To Calculate Gross Dollar Retention in Deltek Ajera | Arithmix

Calculating gross dollar retention is an important metric for any business that wants to understand how much revenue it is retaining from existing customers. This metric is particularly useful for businesses that rely on recurring revenue streams, such as subscription-based services or maintenance contracts. In this article, we'll explain what gross dollar retention is, why it's valuable to calculate, and how to calculate it.

What Is Gross Dollar Retention?

Gross dollar retention is a measure of how much revenue a business is retaining from its existing customers over a given period of time. It takes into account both the revenue generated from existing customers who renew their contracts or subscriptions, as well as revenue generated from upselling or cross-selling to those customers. Essentially, it tells you how much of your revenue is coming from existing customers, rather than new customers.

To calculate gross dollar retention, you need to know the total revenue generated from your existing customers in a given period, as well as the total revenue generated from those same customers in the previous period. The formula for calculating gross dollar retention is:

(Total revenue from existing customers in current period / Total revenue from existing customers in previous period) x 100

For example, if your business generated $100,000 in revenue from existing customers in the current period, and $80,000 in revenue from those same customers in the previous period, your gross dollar retention rate would be:

($100,000 / $80,000) x 100 = 125%

This means that your business retained 125% of the revenue generated from existing customers in the previous period.

When Is It Valuable To Calculate Gross Dollar Retention?

Calculating gross dollar retention is valuable for any business that wants to understand how much revenue it is retaining from existing customers. This metric is particularly useful for businesses that rely on recurring revenue streams, such as subscription-based services or maintenance contracts. By calculating gross dollar retention, you can identify trends in customer retention and identify areas where you may need to improve your customer retention strategies.

Gross dollar retention can also help you identify opportunities for upselling or cross-selling to existing customers. If you see that your gross dollar retention rate is increasing over time, it may be an indication that your customers are becoming more loyal and are more likely to purchase additional products or services from your business.

Overall, calculating gross dollar retention is a valuable metric for any business that wants to understand how much revenue it is retaining from existing customers. By tracking this metric over time, you can identify trends in customer retention and identify opportunities for growth and expansion.

How Do You Calculate Gross Dollar Retention in Deltek Ajera

Deltek Ajera itself isn’t naturally geared towards letting you calculate complex metrics like Gross Dollar Retention. As an alternative, teams typically use products like Arithmix to import data from Deltek Ajera and build out dashboards.

What is Arithmix?

Arithmix is the next generation spreadsheet - a collaborative, web-based platform for working with numbers that’s powerful yet easy to use. With Arithmix you can import data from systems like Deltek Ajera, combine it with data from other systems, and create calculations like Gross Dollar Retention.

In Arithmix, data is organized into Tables and referenced by name, not by cell location like a spreadsheet, simplifying calculation creation. Data and calculations can be shared with others and re-used like building blocks, vastly streamlining analysis, model building, and reporting in a highly scalable and easy to maintain platform. Data can be edited, categorized (by dimensions) and freely pivoted. Calculations are automatically copied across a dimension - eliminating copy and paste of formulas.

Arithmix is fully collaborative, giving your entire team access to your numbers and the ability to work together seamlessly.

Calculating Gross Dollar Retention in Arithmix

Calculating metrics like Gross Dollar Retention is simple in Arithmix. Once you've created your free account, you’ll be able to import your Deltek Ajera data, and use it to create natural language formulas for metrics like Gross Dollar Retention.

Arithmix is designed to give you the power to build any calculations you want on top of your Deltek Ajera data, while also being easy to use and collaborate on. You can share your dashboards with users inside and outside of your organisation, making it easy to empower your whole team.