Finance: revenue, subscriptions and ad spend

Your app's figures: revenue, subscriptions, acquisition spend, on dashboards you compose yourself.

Prerequisite: RevenueCat connected to the project. Without it, the page offers to connect the account rather than showing zeros. Adjust is added for the spend side.


Available metrics

Revenue - RevenueCat source

MetricWhat it measures
MRRMonthly recurring revenue
ARRAnnual recurring revenue
RevenueRevenue collected over the period
ChurnAttrition rate
Active subscribersActive subscribers
Refund rateRefund rate
LTV per customerAverage lifetime value per customer

Subscriptions - RevenueCat source

MetricWhat it measures
New trialsTrials started over the period
Trial conversion rateShare of trials that become paid
New customersNew customers

Marketing - Adjust source

MetricWhat it measuresBreakable down by
Marketing spendAcquisition spendnetwork, campaign, country
InstallsAttributed installsnetwork, campaign, country

Cross-source

ROAS (revenue ÷ spend) is declared as a cross-source metric. Its computation is not shipped yet: in the meantime, the two series read side by side on the same dashboard.


Periods

GroupChoices
Rolling7 days, 30 days, 90 days, 365 days
To dateCurrent month, quarter, year
ClosedPrevious month, quarter, year

The period choice cascades across the whole dashboard: a widget does not carry its own period, otherwise two charts side by side would no longer compare.


Building a dashboard

A dashboard is made of sections, each section contains widgets.

Tutorial - a revenue dashboard

  1. Open Finance. The "Overview" dashboard is created automatically on the first load.
  2. + Section, name it "Revenue".
  3. + Widget: pick the MRR metric and the KPI visualisation. A single large number at the top of the section - that is what people look at first.
  4. Add a second widget: Revenue metric, Line visualisation. The trend next to the number.
  5. New "Acquisition" section: Marketing spend as Stacked areas, broken down by network.
  6. Change the period at the top: everything recomputes together.

Visualisations

TypeGood for
KPIA single number, the value right now
Line / AreasA trend over time
Stacked areas / Stacked barsA composition that changes
BarsA comparison between categories
Donut / PieA breakdown at a point in time

Not every metric accepts every visualisation: the catalogue only offers the ones that make sense for the chosen metric. A conversion rate as a pie chart means nothing, so it is not offered.

An Adjust widget on a project with no Adjust says so explicitly rather than showing a flat line.


How fresh the figures are

Responses are cached, for a duration that depends on what you are looking at.

What you look atCacheWhy
Current period (RevenueCat)1 to 5 minutesThe number is still moving
Closed period (RevenueCat)1 to 24 hoursThe number will not move again
Adjust, current period15 minutesAttribution consolidates slowly

Two consequences worth knowing before worrying about a discrepancy:

  • Today's number can be a few minutes behind. That is the cache, not data loss.
  • Today's attribution number is always partial, however fresh: Adjust consolidates over several hours.

RevenueCat also limits its API to 15 requests per minute per project. Appwin respects that with a queue: that is another reason not everything is reloaded on every display.


Next

  • RevenueCat - connecting the revenue source
  • Adjust - connecting the spend source
  • ASO - what happens before the install