Buyer’s guide Sourced and dated
For a founder or ops lead answering questions from Stripe, HubSpot or product exports, use xmetric: it's free, runs in Safari or Chrome on any Mac, and reads the file without uploading it. Pick Metabase once you want shared dashboards on a live production database, and Tableau if you need its full desktop app. Power BI Desktop is Windows-only.
Our pick
xmetric
It runs in the browser on every Mac on the team, costs nothing, and reads a Stripe or CRM export locally. You get Tableau-style formulas, such as a FIXED expression for each customer's last invoice, without a server to run.
Pick something else if
You want always-on dashboards on a live Postgres or warehouse with scheduled email or Slack reports (Metabase), you need Tableau's full desktop app (Tableau), or the company already lives in Microsoft 365 on Windows (Power BI).
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Here are fourteen months of invoices from a small booking app, exported from Stripe. MRR from paid invoices went from 3,875 in August 2024 to 9,366 in August 2025. Over the same stretch 50 customers left, and 22 of them, 44%, never cancelled: their last invoice failed. That's 1,708 a month of MRR you can win back with card retries and a dunning email, before spending anything on acquisition.
Computed by the xmetric engine
The data
A seed-stage booking app for small businesses on three monthly plans: Starter, Team and Business. 175 customers, one invoice per customer per month, paid or failed.
invoice_id | customer_id | customer | plan | invoice_month | amount | status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| in_00001 | cus_0001 | Lia's Tutors | Team | 2024-08-01 | 99 | paid |
| in_00002 | cus_0002 | Ada's Tutors | Team | 2024-08-01 | 99 | paid |
| in_00003 | cus_0003 | Ben's Salon | Starter | 2024-08-01 | 29 | paid |
| in_00004 | cus_0004 | Cleo's Design | Team | 2024-08-01 | 99 | paid |
Step 1
MRR more than doubled in a year. Growth hides churn, so look at who left.
Tableau
SUM(IF [status] = "paid" THEN [amount] END)SQL
SELECT
invoice_month,
SUM(amount) FILTER (WHERE status = 'paid') AS mrr,
COUNT(*) AS customers_billed
FROM input
GROUP BY invoice_month
ORDER BY invoice_monthRows
| Invoice month | MRR | Customers billed |
|---|---|---|
| Aug 1, 2024 | 3,875 | 55 |
| Sep 1, 2024 | 4,010 | 63 |
| Oct 1, 2024 | 4,677 | 70 |
| Nov 1, 2024 | 5,670 | 73 |
| Dec 1, 2024 | 5,764 | 78 |
| Jan 1, 2025 | 5,834 | 85 |
| Feb 1, 2025 | 6,786 | 90 |
| Mar 1, 2025 | 7,496 | 97 |
| Apr 1, 2025 | 7,472 | 101 |
| May 1, 2025 | 8,151 | 109 |
| Jun 1, 2025 | 8,175 | 115 |
| Jul 1, 2025 | 9,197 | 120 |
| Aug 1, 2025 | 9,366 | 123 |
| Sep 1, 2025 | 8,885 | 125 |
Step 2
A customer is lost when their last invoice is before the latest month. The FIXED expression finds that month for each customer, whatever the view shows. Colour by the status of that last invoice.
Tableau
IF { FIXED [customer_id] : MAX([invoice_month]) } < { FIXED : MAX([invoice_month]) } THEN "Lost"
ENDSQL
WITH c AS (
SELECT
customer_id,
MAX(invoice_month) AS last_month,
arg_max(status, invoice_month) AS last_status
FROM input
GROUP BY customer_id
)
SELECT
last_month,
CASE
WHEN last_status = 'failed' THEN 'Card failed'
ELSE 'Cancelled'
END AS reason,
COUNT(*) AS customers
FROM c
WHERE last_month < (
SELECT MAX(invoice_month)
FROM input
)
GROUP BY last_month, reason
ORDER BY last_month, reasonRows
| Invoice month | Reason | Customers |
|---|---|---|
| 2024-09-01 | Cancelled | 2 |
| 2024-10-01 | Cancelled | 3 |
| 2024-10-01 | Card failed | 2 |
| 2024-11-01 | Cancelled | 2 |
| 2024-11-01 | Card failed | 2 |
| 2025-01-01 | Cancelled | 3 |
| 2025-01-01 | Card failed | 2 |
| 2025-02-01 | Card failed | 4 |
| 2025-03-01 | Cancelled | 5 |
| 2025-03-01 | Card failed | 2 |
| 2025-04-01 | Cancelled | 2 |
| 2025-05-01 | Cancelled | 1 |
| 2025-05-01 | Card failed | 2 |
| 2025-06-01 | Cancelled | 2 |
| 2025-06-01 | Card failed | 4 |
| 2025-07-01 | Cancelled | 1 |
| 2025-07-01 | Card failed | 3 |
| 2025-08-01 | Cancelled | 7 |
| 2025-08-01 | Card failed | 1 |
Step 3
Almost half of the customers who left never asked to. Their card failed, the retry failed, and the subscription lapsed.
| Reason | Customers | MRR |
|---|---|---|
| Cancelled | 28 | 2,452 |
| Card failed | 22 | 1,708 |
Tableau
IF { FIXED [customer_id] : MAX(IF [invoice_month] = { FIXED [customer_id] : MAX([invoice_month]) } THEN [status] END) } = "failed" THEN "Card failed"
ELSE "Cancelled"
ENDSQL
WITH c AS (
SELECT
customer_id,
MAX(invoice_month) AS last_month,
arg_max(status, invoice_month) AS last_status,
arg_max(amount, invoice_month) AS mrr
FROM input
GROUP BY customer_id
)
SELECT
CASE
WHEN last_status = 'failed' THEN 'Card failed'
ELSE 'Cancelled'
END AS reason,
COUNT(*) AS customers,
SUM(mrr) AS mrr_lost
FROM c
WHERE last_month < (
SELECT MAX(invoice_month)
FROM input
)
GROUP BY reason
ORDER BY customers DESCRows
| Reason | Customers | MRR |
|---|---|---|
| Cancelled | 28 | 2,452 |
| Card failed | 22 | 1,708 |
Common mistake
Most failed invoices are paid on the retry the next month. Count customers whose last invoice failed, not failed invoices.
Tableau
COUNT(IF [status] = "failed" THEN [invoice_id] END)SQL
SELECT COUNT(*) FILTER (WHERE status = 'failed') AS churned
FROM inputTableau
COUNTD(IF [status] = "failed" AND [invoice_month] = { FIXED [customer_id] : MAX([invoice_month]) } AND [invoice_month] < { FIXED : MAX([invoice_month]) } THEN [customer_id] END)SQL
WITH c AS (
SELECT
customer_id,
MAX(invoice_month) AS last_month,
arg_max(status, invoice_month) AS last_status
FROM input
GROUP BY customer_id
)
SELECT COUNT(*) AS churned
FROM c
WHERE last_status = 'failed' AND last_month < (
SELECT MAX(invoice_month)
FROM input
)Export invoices with the customer id, the invoice month, the amount and the status, and drop the CSV here. The three steps rerun in your browser; nothing is uploaded.
Drop a CSV anywhere on this page
Up to 10,000 rows. The sample, invoices.csv, shows the shape.
If this is you
Questions from Stripe, HubSpot or product exports, answered on a MacBook
xmetric
Free, no install, the file stays on your laptop.
If this is you
The whole team wants dashboards on the production database, refreshed and emailed
Metabase
Free if you self-host it; Metabase Cloud Starter is $100/mo monthly or $90/mo billed yearly ($1,080/year); first 5 users included; +$6 per user/month ($65 per user/year).
If this is you
An analyst who wants Tableau's full desktop authoring on a Mac
Tableau
Desktop Free Edition is free for one person; sharing online needs Creator at $75 per user/month, billed annually.
If this is you
Finance already works in Excel and Teams on Windows
Power BI
Desktop is free on Windows; sharing needs Pro at $14.00 user/month, paid yearly.
Not natively. Microsoft lists: Windows only: Windows 10 or Windows Server 2016 or later, 64-bit; client Windows recommended. No macOS version is mentioned. The supported route from a Mac is a cloud Windows PC: Power BI Desktop is fully supported on Azure Virtual Desktop and Windows 365 (cloud Windows PCs); other virtual desktop environments such as Citrix VDI are not supported.
Yes. It runs in any modern browser on macOS, with nothing to install.
Not with xmetric: open the CSV, Excel or Parquet file in the app and start dragging fields. For Metabase's free edition: You host it yourself (Java JAR or Docker); no Metabase-managed hosting on the free plan.
Customers you lose because a payment failed, not because they chose to leave. Card retries, expiry reminders and a dunning email sequence win many of them back, which is why it's worth counting separately.
Not yet. Today it works with files: CSV, Excel, Parquet and Tableau workbooks. Live database connections are coming.