Remaining performance obligations is the accounting world's name for backlog: the dollar value of everything a company has signed contracts to deliver but has not yet turned into recognized revenue. It comes directly from the revenue-recognition standard, which requires a company to identify the goods or services it has promised customers (its "performance obligations") and to allocate the contract's transaction price across them. Whatever portion of that allocated price remains tied to obligations the company has not yet satisfied at the balance-sheet date is its RPO. In a subscription security business, that is overwhelmingly future months and years of platform access the customer has already committed to pay for but has not yet consumed.

The figure is concrete and the filing states it as a single number with a conversion timeline. CrowdStrike's Form 10-Q for the quarter ended April 30, 2026 reports both:

"As of April 30, 2026, the aggregate amount of the transaction price allocated to remaining performance obligations was $8.8 billion. The Company expects to recognize approximately 52% of the remaining performance obligations in the 12 months following April 30, 2026, and 42% of the remaining performance obligations between 13 to 36 months, with the remainder to be recognized thereafter."— CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc., Form 10-Q (quarter ended April 30, 2026), source

That disclosure carries more information than the headline dollar figure alone. The split — roughly 52% inside a year, 42% in the 13-to-36-month window, and the rest beyond — is a recognition schedule for contracted revenue the company already holds. The portion expected within twelve months is sometimes called current RPO and functions as a near-term visibility metric: it is contracted revenue with a high probability of being recognized soon, independent of any new sales. The longer-dated portion reflects the duration of the contract book; a larger share sitting beyond twelve months generally signals longer-term contracts, which trade some near-term billings visibility for greater revenue durability.

Why RPO is not the same as deferred revenue

The most common confusion is treating RPO and deferred revenue as interchangeable. They are related but distinct, and the difference is billing. Deferred revenue is a liability on the balance sheet that records cash a company has billed and collected (or invoiced) but not yet earned — payments received in advance of performance. RPO is wider: it captures the full transaction price of unsatisfied obligations, including the future years of a multi-year contract that have not yet been invoiced. A three-year deal billed annually shows only the first year in deferred revenue at signing, but all three years (less anything already recognized) sit in RPO. As a result, RPO is typically the larger number, and the gap between RPO and deferred revenue is, loosely, the unbilled contracted backlog.

The same 10-Q makes the deferred-revenue side explicit when it describes its contract liabilities: "Contract liabilities consist of deferred revenue and include payments received in advance of performance under the contract. Such amounts are recognized as revenue over the contractual period." In other words, deferred revenue is the billed slice; RPO is the whole committed pie. Reading the two together tells you both how much cash has already come in against future service (deferred revenue) and how much total contracted revenue is still to be recognized (RPO).

How to use RPO without overreading it

RPO's appeal is that it is forward-looking and contractually grounded — it reflects signed commitments, not pipeline or guidance. But it has limits that the grounded reader should respect. First, RPO growth can be driven by longer contract durations rather than more business; a company that shifts customers from one-year to three-year terms will show RPO jump even if the number of customers and annual run-rate are unchanged. That is why current RPO (the 12-month slice) is often a cleaner near-term growth signal than total RPO. Second, RPO is a point-in-time figure that can be lumpy quarter to quarter depending on when large multi-year renewals land, so a single quarter's change is weak evidence on its own. Third, RPO excludes contracts that are cancellable for convenience or below a duration threshold, depending on the company's policy, so the definition footnote matters.

The disciplined way to use RPO is therefore comparative and definition-aware: track total and current RPO against the same filer's prior quarters, read the recognition-timing split to understand contract duration, and pair it with deferred revenue to separate the billed book from the unbilled backlog. When management cites RPO on an earnings call, the grounded check is to pull the RPO paragraph from the most recent 10-Q or 10-K, confirm the dollar total and the 12-month conversion percentage, and read the company's stated policy on what is and is not included. The filing is the authoritative source, because RPO is computed and disclosed under the revenue-recognition standard rather than estimated by an analyst.

Read that way, RPO answers a question deferred revenue cannot: not just how much customers have already paid for service they have yet to receive, but how much total contracted revenue — billed and unbilled alike — the company is sitting on and when it expects that revenue to arrive. For a subscription security vendor, where the entire model rests on durable multi-period contracts, it is among the most direct measures of the contracted book's size and shape available in the filing.

Current RPO and the conversion percentage

The most actionable slice of the disclosure is the share expected to convert within twelve months, often called current RPO. In the example above, that is roughly 52% of the $8.8 billion total — on the order of $4.6 billion of contracted revenue the company expects to recognize in the year ahead. Because that portion is contractually committed, it functions as a high-confidence floor on near-term revenue independent of any new bookings. Watching current RPO grow faster or slower than total revenue can reveal whether the contracted book is keeping pace with reported growth. The recognition schedule is required under the revenue standard precisely so a reader can see this timing rather than infer it, and it is one of the few forward-looking figures in a filing that rests on signed contracts rather than estimates.

One more nuance keeps the comparison honest. A company can report RPO inclusive of, or net of, contracts that are cancellable for convenience, and it can apply a practical expedient that excludes contracts shorter than one year from the disclosure. Those policy choices change what the total captures, so the footnote that accompanies the dollar figure is part of the metric, not a footnote to it. When comparing two vendors' RPO, confirm each is measuring the same universe of contracts before reading anything into the difference; the size of the number is only meaningful next to the policy that produced it.