Who churned this month?
A churn count is useful. But the names matter more. Knowing exactly who left tells you whether you lost a one-time buyer or your third-largest account. Here's how to find out.
The short answer
Compare your active customer list from last month to this month. Anyone who had transactions last month but zero this month has churned. You need their names, their typical monthly revenue, and how long they had been a customer. That context turns a number into an action plan.
Why knowing the names changes everything about your response
“We lost 4 customers this month” is a statistic. “We lost Riverside Dental, who was worth $3,200 a month and had been with us for 14 months” is a crisis that demands a phone call.
The identity of churned customers tells you the severity, the likely cause, and the right response. Losing a one-time buyer who spent $200 is normal. Losing a long-term client who represented 8% of your revenue requires immediate action and possibly a post-mortem to prevent it from happening again.
Without the names, you cannot prioritize. Without the revenue figures, you cannot assess the impact. Without the tenure, you cannot spot patterns. All three pieces of context matter.
What you need to know about each churned customer
For each customer who churned, you want four data points:
Your accounting software can give you the first three. The fourth requires looking at their transaction history over the last 3-6 months, which adds time but adds the most insight.
How to identify churned customers in QuickBooks Online
- 1Go to Reports → Sales by Customer Summary
Run the report for last month and export to CSV. Then run it for this month and export to CSV.
- 2Find the missing names
In a spreadsheet, use VLOOKUP to identify customers who appear in last month's export but are absent from this month's.
- 3Pull their transaction history
For each churned customer, go to their customer profile in QuickBooks. Review their transaction list. Note the average monthly spend and when their first transaction was.
- 4Check for declining patterns
Look at their last 3-6 months. Did the order size or frequency decline before they stopped entirely? Gradual decline suggests dissatisfaction. An abrupt stop might mean they switched vendors or had a one-time project.
Total time: 30-45 minutes. The comparison is quick, but pulling individual transaction histories for each churned customer is where the time adds up.
How to identify churned customers in Xero
- 1Export invoices for each month from Business → Invoices
Filter by last month and this month separately. Pull unique customer names from each export.
- 2Find the gaps using a spreadsheet comparison
Same VLOOKUP method. Customers in last month but not this month are your churned list.
- 3Review each churned customer in Contacts
Go to Contacts, find each churned customer, and review their full invoice history. Note average spend, tenure, and any declining patterns.
Total time: 30-45 minutes. Nearly identical to the QuickBooks process, starting from the invoice export.
Why detailed churn analysis rarely happens in practice
- 30-45 minutes per month. Enough time that it gets deprioritized in favor of more urgent tasks.
- You find out weeks after the fact. By the time you run this analysis at month-end, the customer has already been gone for weeks. Earlier detection would have given you a chance to intervene.
- Individual review does not scale. Looking up each churned customer one by one works when you lose 3. When you lose 10, it takes over an hour. When you lose 20, nobody is doing it.
Or see exactly who churned, automatically
Bottomline identifies every churned customer each month, shows their name, average monthly revenue, tenure, and whether their spending was declining before they stopped. No exports, no spreadsheets.
The “Declining” vs. “Abrupt” pattern tag is the key insight. Declining customers could have been saved with outreach. Abrupt departures may indicate a competitive loss or business closure. Different patterns require different responses.