Free calculator
How many months it takes to earn back what you spent to get a customer, and how much cash has to sit there while you wait.
This is the number that decides how fast you can grow. If it takes five months to earn back what you spent to acquire someone, you need five months of cash sitting there. Ratios do not pay bills, timing does.
From category 5, point 8. Read the whole category.
What you are selling
Ad spend, affiliate payouts, and your own hours at a real rate, divided by the customers it produced.
After processing fees, delivery costs and support. Not the price on the page.
If you do not know yet, 1 divided by your monthly cancellation rate is the estimate. Ten percent a month is ten months.
This is what turns the payback period into a cash figure.
Payback period
0 months
How the number was reached
The rest of it
Reading it. Under three months you can spend with some confidence. Past six months you are funding the gap out of your own pocket, so the cash figure at the bottom is the one to look at, not the payback period on its own.
Platform attribution overstates itself, every platform, always, so the cost per customer you type in here should come from your bank deposits rather than from an ad dashboard. Refunds are a margin line, not a customer service issue, so take them out of the margin before it goes in the box above.