The DataHero Blog

Online subscription payment services like Stripe and Braintree make online payments easy, and produce a lot of data in the process. They contain key metrics about your revenue and customer segments that can lead to important insights about your business. In this post I’ll outline how to set up the charts and analytics to keep track of these metrics in DataHero and keep them up to date in one place. Monthly recurring revenue and cohort analysis are also popular metrics to track, and have been covered in previous posts if you’d like to read up on them.

To demonstrate how to chart some of these payment data questions in DataHero, I’ll show you how easy it is to answer these five questions:

1.) How many new sign ups am I getting per month?

2.) What do my transactions look like overall or broken down by specific segments?

3.) How many of my subscription customers cancel on trial or later in their subscription?

4.) What percentage of charges am I refunding?

For this post we’ll outline how to create these charts using Stripe and Braintree. Begin by connecting DataHero to your Stripe or Braintree account and importing the Customers and Invoices report if you’re using Stripe, and the Transactions report if you’re using Braintree.

Sign Ups

Step 1: Click Create New Chart

Step 2: Drag on the following attributes:

• Customer Email
• Subscription  Start/Transaction Created

Step 3: Drag “Status” onto the lower portion of the canvas where it says “Create a Filter”

Step 4: Select the subscription status you’d like to view (Active, Trial or both)

Step 5: Ensure that you have “Number of Unique Values In” above Customer Email

Step 6: Slide the filter under Customer Email all the way to 1

In the end, your left side bar should look like this:

Once you’ve added these elements to the chart, you’ll have a graph of sign ups by subscription date filtered for subscription status.

Change the time grouping quickly by simply clicking on the “Grouped by” dropdown menu under the date attribute. Switch to sign ups by week, day, or even day of week.

Transactions by Month

Step 1: Click Create A New Chart

Step 2: Drag on the following attributes:

• Amount
• Subscription Start

DataHero automatically creates a column graph that depicts your monthly recurring revenue.

Drag on other filters like coupon or plan to visualize how revenue is divided amongst these segments. This is also a perfect time to drag on “Customer Created” to create a quick cohort analysis chart.

Cancellations by Month (Stripe)

Step 1: Click Create A New Chart

Step 2: Drag on the following attributes:

• Cancel Subscription at Period End
• Subscription Start

That’s it! DataHero will create a chart of sign ups and cancellations by date, giving you a visual estimate for churn.

Recurring Payments (Braintree)

This is a similar chart to the one created above for Stripe but looks instead at recurring vs. one time transactions.

Step 1: Create a New Chart

Step 2: Drag on the following attributes:

• Transaction Created
• Recurring Transaction

You’ll get a graph of the revenue that you see from recurring vs. non-recurring payments automatically:

Refunds as a Percentage of Charges

Note: For this chart, import the Customers and Charges report from Stripe. If you’re using Braintree, you can continue to use the Transactions report.

Step 1: Click Create A New Chart

Step 2: Drag on the following attributes:

• Amount
• Amount Refunded
• Charge Created

Step 3: Click “Type” in the top left corner of the chart page and select Stacked Column

Step 4: Click the Percentage button in the top left of the chart

Add the charts you need to a dashboard and enable DataHero Live Charts to make sure all your data is up to date and in one place.

Do you have other payment questions you’re hoping to answer with DataHero? Let us know in the comments below. Sign up for a free DataHero account today and import your payment data from Stripe or Braintree to answer your transactional data questions.

Create a free DataHero account