Metrics

Every company has the same argument: what’s our actual revenue number? One report says one thing, a spreadsheet says another, and nobody’s sure which to trust. A metric is Ronja’s answer — the single, agreed way to calculate a number like Monthly Recurring Revenue, churn, or active users, with one definition the whole company shares, traceable all the way down to its source data.

You don’t write SQL to make one. You describe it, Ronja builds it, and an admin verifies it — after which it carries a visible trust badge so everyone knows they can rely on it.

Roles

Anyone can propose a metric. Saving a durable, shared metric — one that lives in a feature the team can see — requires the Admin role, as does verifying one.

What makes a metric different from a table

A metric looks a bit like a table — in fact it’s a special kind of one — but it behaves differently in three ways that matter:

• It’s a definition, not a stored result. A table holds rows. A metric holds a recipe — “sum net_sek, divide by the count of orders, anchored on order_date.” Every time you look at it, Ronja recomputes the number from the source data. Nothing is frozen.
• It always shows its trust badge. A metric is either Verified, Unvetted, drifted (“review pending”), or Retired, and it says which at all times. Any table can carry those states — see Verification — but only a metric wears the badge even while unvetted, because for a number the company is asked to trust, “nobody has checked this” is itself worth saying.
• It slices correctly. Because a metric recomputes from source, you can break it down by any dimension or time period and the number stays right — even for a ratio. “Average order value, UK only, 2025” is computed from scratch over exactly those rows, not by re-dividing a pre-baked total (which would be wrong).

The two things a metric tracks

A metric has two independent states, and keeping them separate is the key to the whole feature:

Axis	Values	Question it answers
Lifecycle	Live · In progress · Archived	Is it finished being built?
Trust	Verified · Review pending · Unvetted · Retired	Can you rely on the number?

A metric can be fully built and live but still unvetted (nobody has verified it yet). A metric can be verified but drifted — meaning its definition changed since it was last checked, so the endorsement is paused until an admin re-confirms. The two never mean the same thing.

Creating a metric

There are two ways in, and both end with Ronja building it with you — there’s no form where you type raw SQL.

1. Open Metrics in the sidebar and click New metric (or Create a metric on the empty state).
2. Give it a name (“Net Revenue Retention”), describe how it should be calculated in plain language, and optionally list what you want to break it down by. Ronja can suggest the breakdowns for you.
3. Click Create & request verification. Ronja opens a chat in Build mode, finds the right source table, works out the recipe with you, and creates the metric.

Describe the number in plain language; Ronja builds the definition and an admin verifies it.

You can also just ask Ronja in any chat — “make ‘Average Order Value’ an official metric” — and she’ll do the same thing. (She won’t mint a metric just to answer a one-off question; a metric is a deliberate, governed act.)

Every new metric starts unvetted. Verification is never automatic — that’s what makes the “Verified” badge mean something.

What Ronja builds it from

Under the hood, a metric is a small, strict recipe:

• One clean source table. A metric reads from exactly one already-tidy table. If the data needs cleaning, joining, or de-duplicating first, that happens upstream in a prep table — so the metric itself stays simple and auditable.
• A time anchor. Every metric is tied to a date column and a finest grain (day, week, month, quarter, or year), so it can always be shown as a trend.
• Named measures and a formula. Ronja defines the building blocks (e.g. revenue = sum(net_sek), orders = count(*)) and combines them with simple arithmetic (revenue / orders) — no SQL functions, just the pieces and the math.

Because the formula is explicit, Ronja knows whether a metric is additive (safe to sum across rows, like total revenue) or not (a ratio or a distinct count, like average order value) — and handles slicing correctly either way.

The calendar it counts on

A metric also has a reporting timezone — the calendar its day, week, and month buckets fall on. It matters most at month boundaries: an invoice dated the 1st lands in different months depending on which calendar you count it against, and a metric is exactly the kind of number where two colleagues must not get two answers.

So a metric’s calendar is fixed to the metric, not to whoever is looking at it. Everyone in the company sees the same months, whether they’re reading it from Stockholm, London, or New York. New metrics take your organization’s timezone (set by an admin on the Approvals page in the admin area) and keep it from then on — changing the organization default later doesn’t quietly move the calendar of metrics you already rely on. A metric created before your organization set a timezone, or while it has none, doesn’t have a calendar of its own: it still reads in each viewer’s own timezone, the way it always has. Nothing was switched over for you, so an existing metric’s numbers have not moved — but that also means two colleagues in different countries can still read such a metric differently. Ask Ronja to give it a calendar when it should be one official number.

To change it, ask Ronja in chat. Because the calendar is part of what the number means, changing it counts as changing the definition: a verified metric will show “Verified · review pending” until an admin re-confirms it, exactly as any other edit would.

Verifying and trusting a metric

This is where a metric earns its place as an official number. A new metric is Unvetted; an admin reviews it and marks it Verified, after which it shows a green badge and Ronja prefers it when answering KPI questions. If its definition later changes, or an upstream table it depends on changes, it shows amber “Verified · review pending” until an admin acknowledges the change or has it reworked. An admin can also Retire a metric that is no longer the right way to measure something.

Verification is not a metrics-only idea — an admin can verify a table of any kind the same way, and the states, the drift rule, and the search ranking are all shared. Verification covers the mechanics in full.

What is particular to a metric is that its badge is always shown, including Unvetted — a number the company is asked to trust should say where it stands either way, where an ordinary table only shows a badge once it has one worth showing. That holds on the metric’s own page, in the table lists it appears in, and on the architecture map; Search (⌘K) results are the one terse surface, showing only Verified or Retired.

Anyone can Report an issue on a metric — a flag icon on its page, with no counterpart on an ordinary table. That notifies the owner and admins for review but, deliberately, does not change the metric’s status: one person’s doubt doesn’t un-verify a company number.

A verified metric: its trend, its trust badge, the slice controls, and the full definition resolved down to source.

Using a metric

Open any metric to see its trend chart and slice it: change the grain (day, week, month, quarter, or year — only grains at or coarser than the metric’s finest grain are offered) or pick a breakdown dimension to split it into series. The “How it’s really calculated” panel shows the full definition resolved all the way down to the raw source tables — so there’s never a mystery about where a number comes from.

When you ask Ronja a KPI question in chat, she’ll answer using the relevant verified metric and show it as a trusted card — and she’ll tell you plainly if the only metric available is unvetted or drifted, rather than passing an unendorsed number off as official.

You can also put a metric on an app: ask Ronja to build a KPI app that shows a metric, and the app reads the live, governed definition — so a dashboard-style app displays the official number, and updates automatically whenever the metric’s definition changes.

Its description

Just under the metric’s name, at the top of the chart, sits its description — the plain-English answer to “what is this number, exactly?”. Ronja writes the first one when she builds the metric.

A small marker next to the metric’s name tells you where the description came from: AI means Ronja wrote it, Edited means a colleague did. Everyone sees it — knowing whether a number’s definition was described by a person or by Ronja is part of knowing how far to trust it. Click either marker to read what it means.

An Admin can rewrite it at any time: click the description, type, and click away to save. If there isn’t one yet, the same spot reads Describe what this metric measures… — click it and write. Everyone else sees the description but can’t change it.

Once it’s written, a metric’s description stays put. Ronja writes one when she builds the metric and doesn’t rewrite it afterwards — not when the metric is rebuilt, and not when its definition changes — and she will never write over text a person has written. She can’t be talked into it either: ask her in a chat to change a description a colleague wrote and she’ll say it was written by a person, and point you at the two ways to unlock it — edit it in place here, or hand it back to her with Let Ronja write it again. (A description Ronja wrote herself she’ll happily reword on request.)

So the description is the right place to record the judgement calls a recipe can’t express: which customers count, why a month is a calendar month, what the number is for. The flip side is that it won’t correct itself, so it’s worth a read whenever the metric’s definition moves.

You can also hand the job back. If the written text has gone stale — or was never quite right — an Admin clicks the Edited marker and chooses Let Ronja write it again. Ronja reads the metric’s definition, writes a fresh description on the spot, and the marker returns to AI. If Ronja can’t write one, nothing changes — the existing description is left exactly as it was.

That option appears in the same places the description itself is editable: on the live metric, signed in as an Admin. It isn’t offered on an older version opened from History, or in the side panel inside a chat.

Caution

Let Ronja write it again replaces the description your colleague wrote, and there’s no undo. You’re asked to confirm before it runs.

Caution

If someone is part-way through an unpublished edit to the metric, committing that edit also publishes the description as it stood when the edit began — so a description changed in the meantime, whether an admin typed it or used Let Ronja write it again, will revert. Change the description before starting an edit, or again after it’s committed.

Cumulative view

Some metrics measure change per period — a flow, like Net New MRR (how much recurring revenue you added or lost that month). For those, switch the View control under the chart from Per period to Cumulative to see the running total: each point sums everything up to that date, so the line climbs toward the current standing total. It’s a display choice only — it doesn’t change the metric’s definition.

The View toggle appears only for additive metrics (ones it’s meaningful to add up, like revenue or new sign-ups), and only on a time trend.

Use it on a flow, not a level. Cumulating Net New MRR builds up to your total MRR — that’s the whole point. But cumulating a metric that already measures a standing level — plain MRR, or active users — adds each month’s balance on top of the last and produces a meaningless number. Ronja can’t tell a flow from a level on its own, so that judgement is yours.

Why this matters

A metric is the difference between “here’s a number” and “here’s the number, and here’s why you can trust it.” It’s how a whole company can stop arguing about whose spreadsheet is right.

A few practical limits

• A metric always starts unvetted — an admin verifies it; it’s never automatic.
• Editing a verified metric re-triggers drift (“review pending”) until an admin re-confirms — this is expected.
• In the detail page you can slice by grain and breakdown; filtering to a specific value (e.g. one country) is available when you ask Ronja in chat.