ChurnLens

See subscription health before churn hits.

ChurnLens is a SaaS analytics tool for subscription businesses that connects to Stripe and turns billing data into monthly revenue reporting, churn alerts, and cohort analysis. It helps founders, growth teams, and finance leads understand retention trends, spot revenue risk early, and make faster decisions without exporting spreadsheets.

Business Goals

  • Reach 100 paying customers within 6 months of launch.
  • Convert at least 20 percent of activated workspaces to paid plans within 60 days.
  • Keep monthly logo churn below 5 percent in the first year.
  • Achieve 40 percent week-4 retention among activated accounts.
  • Reduce average time from signup to first useful dashboard under 10 minutes.

User Goals

  • Connect Stripe and see revenue metrics in under 10 minutes.
  • Receive actionable churn alerts before monthly revenue drops materially.
  • Analyze retention by cohort, plan, and signup month without spreadsheet work.
  • Track monthly recurring revenue, churn, expansion, and contraction in one place.
  • Share a reliable revenue view with leadership or investors.

Non-Goals

  • Not a full billing platform or replacement for Stripe Billing.
  • Not a general-purpose BI tool with arbitrary data modeling.
  • Not real-time transaction fraud detection or payments orchestration.
  • Not an accounting system for revenue recognition or tax filing.

Founder Fiona, 38 - Fiona runs a SaaS startup and checks Stripe every week to understand growth and churn. She needs a fast, trustworthy view of revenue health without building dashboards herself.

Founder Fiona, 38

  • As a founder, I want a single dashboard showing MRR, ARR, and churn, so that I can assess business health in minutes.
  • As a founder, I want alert thresholds for sudden churn spikes, so that I can react before the board meeting.
  • As a founder, I want cohort retention charts by signup month, so that I can understand whether product changes improved retention.

Revenue Ops Raj, 44 - Raj manages billing and revenue reporting for a growing subscription company. He needs clean data, explainable metrics, and enough detail to reconcile changes against Stripe activity.

Revenue Ops Raj, 44

  • As a revenue ops manager, I want metrics tied to Stripe events and invoices, so that I can trust the numbers.
  • As a revenue ops manager, I want filters by plan, currency, and region, so that I can isolate anomalies quickly.
  • As a revenue ops manager, I want exportable reports, so that I can share analysis with finance and leadership.

Customer Success Maya, 31 - Maya tracks renewal risk and customer health. She needs proactive signals that help her prioritize accounts likely to churn.

Customer Success Maya, 31

  • As a customer success manager, I want churn alerts segmented by plan or cohort, so that I can focus on the highest-risk segment.
  • As a customer success manager, I want trend changes over the last 7, 14, and 30 days, so that I can spot deterioration early.
  • As a customer success manager, I want notes and annotations on alerts, so that the team can track actions taken.

Stripe Integration and Data Sync · High priority

  • Connect to Stripe securely, import subscription and billing data, and keep metrics current through a combination of initial backfill and ongoing syncs.
  • Support OAuth or restricted API key connection to Stripe with clear permission messaging.
  • Perform initial historical import for subscriptions, customers, invoices, payments, refunds, and subscription events.
  • Use Stripe webhooks for near-real-time updates and scheduled backfill jobs to recover missed events.
  • Detect duplicate events and idempotently process updates to avoid double-counting MRR or churn.
  • Show sync status, last successful update, and a retry flow when authentication or rate limits fail.

Metrics and Dashboarding · High priority

  • Provide a default executive dashboard with monthly revenue, churn, retention, and cohort views that are understandable without custom setup.
  • Display MRR, ARR, new MRR, expansion MRR, contraction MRR, churn MRR, and net revenue change.
  • Allow date range filters and comparisons to prior periods.
  • Include cohort retention charts by start month, plan, and customer segment.
  • Explain each metric with a hover definition and calculation method.
  • Mark incomplete data windows and delayed Stripe syncs clearly.

Churn Alerts and Notifications · High priority

  • Automatically detect meaningful changes in revenue or retention and notify users quickly through configurable alert rules.
  • Support alerts for churn spikes, MRR drops, unusual downgrade volume, and renewal concentration risk.
  • Let users configure thresholds by absolute value, percentage change, and moving average deviation.
  • Send alerts via email and Slack, with in-app notifications as the default destination.
  • Include alert context such as affected plans, time window, and contributing accounts where permitted.
  • Avoid duplicate notifications for the same incident within a configurable cooldown window.

Cohort Analysis and Segmentation · Medium priority

  • Enable teams to slice subscription performance into cohorts and segments to understand retention behavior and product-market fit.
  • Group cohorts by signup month, first paid date, plan, currency, and country when available.
  • Show retention curves and cohort revenue over time.
  • Support segmentation by active, canceled, paused, trialing, and past-due accounts.
  • Allow drill-down from aggregate views to underlying customer lists with permission checks.
  • Provide CSV export for filtered cohort tables.

Admin, Security, and Collaboration · Medium priority

  • Support multi-user workspaces, access control, and auditability so teams can safely use the product across functions.
  • Provide workspace-level roles such as owner, analyst, and viewer.
  • Track audit logs for integrations, alert changes, and exports.
  • Require email verification and optional SSO for higher-tier plans.
  • Support inviting teammates and managing notification preferences.
  • Include basic billing management for the SaaS product itself.

Fast Stripe Connection Onboarding

  • Create an account and choose a workspace name.
  • Connect Stripe through secure authorization or API key entry.
  • Run the first sync and show estimated completion time.
  • Present a guided dashboard tour with the most important metrics highlighted.
  • Let the user set an alert threshold and notification channel.
  • Target time-to-value: first dashboard within 10 minutes for most accounts, under 20 minutes for large histories.

1. Connect and Verify

  • The user starts by connecting Stripe and confirming what data will be imported.
  • Validate credentials immediately and surface permission issues before sync starts.
  • Show whether the Stripe account is live or test mode.
  • If the account has multiple environments or disconnected permissions, explain the limitation and allow re-authentication.

2. Initial Data Sync

  • ChurnLens imports historical billing data and prepares baseline metrics.
  • Show progress for backfill by object type and date range.
  • If historical data is large, process in batches and keep the UI responsive.
  • Handle partial sync failures with a resumable job and visible retry action.

3. Executive Dashboard

  • After sync, the default dashboard summarizes revenue health in plain language.
  • Show MRR, ARR, churn, and net change with period-over-period comparisons.
  • Flag anomalies such as sharp churn increases or missing webhook activity.
  • Provide explanations for metric deltas and definitions directly in the UI.

4. Cohort and Segment Drilldown

  • Users inspect retention patterns and isolate segments driving changes.
  • Allow clicking any chart segment to drill into the customer list behind it.
  • Support filters by plan, cohort month, and subscription status.
  • If a filter returns too few records for statistical confidence, display a warning and suppress misleading trend claims.

5. Alert Setup and Review

  • Users create notifications and review incidents over time.
  • Offer suggested defaults based on volatility and account size.
  • Include alert history, resolved status, and notes.
  • Prevent alert spam by batching related events and requiring minimum significance thresholds.

Power Features and Edge Cases

  • Multi-workspace management for agencies or holding companies.
  • Custom alert routing to Slack channels by segment or account owner.
  • CSV export and scheduled email reports for leadership reporting.
  • Saved filters and dashboard bookmarks for recurring analyses.
  • Handling of refunds, pauses, trials, upgrades, downgrades, and past-due states in churn calculations.
  • Backfill recovery after webhook outages or Stripe API interruptions.

UI Principles

  • Use clean, finance-friendly charts with high contrast and minimal clutter.
  • Make every metric definition accessible with plain-language help text.
  • Design for fast scanning on desktop first, with responsive support for tablet use.
  • Ensure charts remain interpretable with color-blind-safe palettes and non-color cues.
  • Keep perceived performance high with skeleton loading, cached summaries, and progressive chart rendering.

Fiona launches ChurnLens because her team keeps arguing about whether churn is improving or just being measured differently in spreadsheets. After connecting Stripe, she has a live dashboard in minutes showing MRR, churn, and cohort retention in one place.

A week later, ChurnLens alerts her that downgrades in one plan segment are spiking faster than usual. She drills into the cohort view, sees the pattern tied to a recent pricing change, and shares a clean report with the team before the monthly review.

Instead of reacting to churn after the fact, Fiona now sees risk early and can take action while there is still time to save revenue. The business gets faster decisions, less reporting overhead, and a more reliable growth narrative.

User-Centric Metrics

  • Median time from signup to first dashboard under 10 minutes.
  • At least 70 percent of activated users view a cohort report within the first 7 days.
  • Alert acknowledgement rate above 60 percent within 24 hours.
  • Users create at least one alert rule within the first session in 50 percent of activated workspaces.
  • Monthly active workspace retention above 40 percent at week 4.

Business Metrics

  • 20 percent trial-to-paid conversion within 60 days.
  • Monthly recurring revenue growth of 15 percent month over month in the first 6 months post-launch.
  • Logo churn below 5 percent monthly after the first quarter.
  • At least 30 percent of new signups come from referrals or word-of-mouth by month 9.

Technical Metrics

  • 99.9 percent uptime for dashboard and API endpoints.
  • P95 dashboard load time under 2 seconds for cached views and under 4 seconds for uncached views.
  • Webhook processing lag under 60 seconds for 95 percent of events.
  • No more than 0.1 percent of sync jobs fail without automatic retry.

Tracking Plan

  • Track workspace_created when a new workspace is provisioned.
  • Track stripe_connected when authorization or API key setup succeeds.
  • Track initial_sync_completed with duration, object counts, and data range.
  • Track dashboard_viewed with page type, filters applied, and load time.
  • Track alert_created with rule type, threshold, and delivery channel.
  • Track alert_triggered with severity, affected segment, and delay from event occurrence.
  • Track export_downloaded with report type and filter snapshot.

Technical Needs

  • Frontend built with Next.js and TypeScript for fast, server-rendered dashboards.
  • Backend API using Node.js or NestJS with a clean service layer for sync and alert logic.
  • PostgreSQL as the primary relational store for subscriptions, metrics snapshots, and audit logs.
  • Redis and a job queue such as BullMQ or Sidekiq-like equivalent for sync jobs and alert evaluation.
  • Stripe webhooks listener with idempotency keys and replay protection.
  • Charting layer using a performant library such as Recharts, ECharts, or Visx.
  • Observability stack with OpenTelemetry, structured logs, error tracking, and job tracing.

Integration Points

  • Stripe Billing API and Stripe webhooks.
  • Slack notifications for alert delivery.
  • Email delivery through SendGrid or Postmark.
  • Authentication via Auth0, Clerk, or a similar managed auth provider.
  • Optional data warehouse export to BigQuery or Snowflake for enterprise customers.

Data Storage & Privacy

  • Store only the minimum Stripe identifiers and subscription metadata required for analytics.
  • Encrypt data in transit and at rest, including API credentials and tokens.
  • Support GDPR and CCPA requests for account deletion and data export.
  • Separate tenant data by workspace with strict row-level access controls.
  • Keep audit logs for sensitive actions such as exports, role changes, and integration updates.

Scalability & Performance

  • Design sync workers to process large Stripe histories in chunks to avoid timeout and memory pressure.
  • Cache computed dashboard aggregates to avoid recalculating every page load.
  • Use incremental metric updates from webhooks instead of full recomputation where possible.
  • Shard or partition large event tables by workspace or time once volume grows.

Potential Challenges

  • Stripe API rate limits could slow backfills; mitigate with queue-based throttling, retry backoff, and cached checkpoints.
  • Metric definitions can vary by customer expectation; mitigate with explicit metric documentation and calculation previews.
  • Webhook gaps or missed events can corrupt aggregates; mitigate with periodic reconciliation jobs against Stripe.
  • Alert fatigue may reduce trust; mitigate with sensible defaults, cooldowns, and alert severity tuning.
  • Cohort analysis on sparse data may produce misleading charts; mitigate with confidence warnings and minimum sample thresholds.

Team & resourcing - Small team of 3 to 4 people: 2 engineers, 1 designer, and a part-time PM or founder.

Phase 1: MVP Foundations · Weeks 1–4

  • Workspace creation and authentication
  • Stripe connection flow with secure credential handling
  • Initial data sync for subscriptions, invoices, customers, and key events
  • Basic MRR, ARR, and churn dashboard
  • Foundational database schema and audit logging

Phase 2: Alerts and Cohorts · Weeks 5–8

  • Churn alert engine with email notifications
  • Slack integration for alerts
  • Cohort retention charts and filtering
  • Metric definitions and drill-down views
  • Sync status monitoring and retry controls

Phase 3: Beta Hardening · Weeks 9–12

  • Role-based access control
  • Exports and scheduled reports
  • Performance tuning and cached aggregates
  • Webhook reconciliation and failure recovery
  • Usage analytics and onboarding improvements

Phase 4: Launch Readiness · Weeks 13–16

  • Billing for the SaaS product
  • Polished onboarding and guided setup
  • Security review, privacy policy, and compliance checklist
  • Launch dashboard, empty states, and product tour
  • Public beta rollout to first 20 to 30 customers

Paste this into Cursor, Bolt, Lovable, or v0 to start building.

Build a SaaS web app called ChurnLens for subscription businesses that connects to Stripe and provides monthly revenue analytics, churn alerts, and cohort analysis.

Core product requirements:
Connect to Stripe securely with OAuth or restricted API key input, support initial historical backfill and ongoing webhook-based syncs, and show sync status with retries. After connection, present an executive dashboard with MRR, ARR, new MRR, expansion, contraction, churn, and net revenue change. Add cohort retention charts by signup month, plan, and customer segment. Include configurable alerts for churn spikes, MRR drops, downgrade spikes, and renewal risk, delivered by email and Slack. Support workspace roles, audit logs, exports, and basic billing for the app.

Primary screens and flows:
1) Marketing landing page and auth screens
2) Workspace creation and Stripe connect onboarding
3) Initial sync progress and setup completion
4) Main analytics dashboard with filters and time ranges
5) Cohort analysis view with drill-down to customer lists
6) Alert rules page and alert history page
7) Workspace settings, team invites, integrations, exports, and billing

Data model:
Workspace, User, Membership, StripeConnection, SyncJob, Customer, Subscription, Invoice, Payment, Refund, MetricSnapshot, Cohort, AlertRule, AlertEvent, Notification, AuditLog, ReportExport.
Persist tenant-safe data in PostgreSQL with row-level security. Use Redis-backed job queues for sync and alert evaluation. Store Stripe object IDs, timestamps, status fields, metric values, and calculated segment keys.

Suggested stack:
Next.js, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, shadcn/ui, PostgreSQL, Prisma or Drizzle, Redis, BullMQ, Stripe API and webhooks, Auth.js or Clerk, Recharts or ECharts, SendGrid or Postmark, Slack OAuth integration, OpenTelemetry, and Sentry.

Implementation guidance:
Prioritize a clean, finance-friendly UI with fast loading charts and accessible tables. Make the product multi-tenant, resilient to webhook delays, and idempotent for all Stripe event processing. Add sensible empty states, error handling, loading skeletons, and responsive layout. Generate production-quality code scaffolding, database schema, API routes, webhook handlers, job workers, and the main UI pages.

Business Idea

I’m building a SaaS tool that connects to Stripe and gives monthly revenue, churn alerts, and detailed cohort analytics for subscription businesses. I need a PRD that covers integration flows, key metrics (e.g. onboarding time, alert speed), user personas, risks like API limits, and a realistic launch scope. Please generate a detailed, ready-to-present Product Requirements Document for this SaaS app.

Make My PRD

Design by The Resonance | Powered by GPC – The AI Transformation Company

    PRD: I’m building a SaaS tool that connects to Stripe