Unit Economics and CAC Payback
Most stores that die were growing when they died. They were paying more to win a customer than that customer returned inside the time their cash could cover. This dashboard shows you that gap in four numbers, and the highest price you can pay for a customer before growth starts costing you money.
What one order looks like
Take these from a normal month, not your best one.
What it costs to win one
Leaving this out is the most common way a CAC looks better than it is.
What they come back for
This is the number that decides whether a payback period is survivable or fatal. A twelve month payback is fine on patient money and lethal on six months of cash.
The four numbers
Where the order goes
Cumulative return on one customer
The line crosses zero the month that customer stops costing you money. The dashed line is the edge of the cash you said you have.
The most you can pay for a customer
At each payback period you are willing to accept, this is the highest cost per customer your own numbers can carry.
| Payback within | Highest CAC you can pay | Against your CAC |
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It assumes the customers you win this month behave like the ones you already have. In a young store that is a guess, and the first hundred customers are almost always your best ones, so a twelve month value taken from them will flatter you.
It counts a customer as paid back when contribution has covered acquisition. It does not carry your fixed costs, so a healthy payback here still does not mean the business is profitable. That is the operating profit line, and the runway tool is where it lives.
Returns are treated as lost orders, which is right for the money and gentle on reality: a returned item you cannot resell costs you more than the order was worth.
Opsbench sells one full time operations seat at $2,950 per month to US ecommerce brands. That seat is a fixed cost, and this page deliberately does not carry fixed costs, so it cannot tell you whether you can afford one. What it can tell you is which half of the problem you have. If payback is long because acquisition costs too much, a seat does nothing about that, and the work is in the ad account and the offer. If payback is fine and the constraint is that every order still passes through you, that is the half a seat changes. Email us the role only if it is the second one.