Figure 1From “What is CAC payback period?”
The CAC payback cash calendar worksheet
Track monthly cash out against cumulative gross contribution to identify true break-even milestones.
Figure 1The CAC payback cash calendar worksheet
| Field | Question to settle | Failure if omitted |
|---|---|---|
| Outflow timing | When do sales commissions, agency fees, and advertising costs actually leave bank accounts? | Cash drain precedes recorded acquisition date by months |
| Margin boundary | Which customer-success, hosting, implementation, and payment fees are deducted from billing? | Gross revenue used as contribution; true payback delayed |
| Retention decay | How many cohort accounts cancel or contract before reaching the break-even milestone? | Surviving accounts subsidize departed accounts without notice |
| Collection lag | Does billing occur upfront annually, quarterly in advance, or monthly in arrears with payment terms? | Contract value confused with collected bank cash |
| Expansion policy | Is mid-contract expansion credited to initial CAC recovery or evaluated as separate spend? | Unrelated expansion masks underperforming initial deals |
| Capital hurdle rate | Is financing cost or cost of working capital applied to the unrecovered cash trough? | True cost of delayed cash recovery remains invisible |
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Source: Author's cash-recovery framework grounded in customer profitability and unit economics principles from Gupta, Lehmann and Stuart (2004), Mulhern (1999), and Rust, Lemon and Zeithaml (2004).
Source and evidence
Each line names a claim related to this exhibit, its source, and how it was checked.
- A GLS04-C2 The sensitivity is theirs and it is asymmetric: "a 1% improvement in retention, margin, or acqui"sition cost "improves firm value by 5%, 1%, and .1%, respectively"Gupta, Lehmann & Stuart. (2004)
- A MUL99-C1 The paper is METHOD, not an empirical finding, in its own words: "This paper provides a conceptual and methodological foundation for measuring customer profitability" by extending customer-lifetime-value approaches to broader target-marketing applications.Mulhern. (1999)
- A RLZ04-C1 The framework is a trade-off device, in the authors' words: "a unified strategic framework that enables competing marketing strategy options to be traded off on the basis of projected financial return, which is operationalized as the change in a firm's customer equity rel"ative to the incremental expenditure needed to produce itRust, Lemon & Zeithaml. (2004)
- A RLZ04-C2 The components of a lifetime value are enumerated: "each customer's lifetime value results from the frequency of category purchases, average quantity of purchase, and brand-switching patterns combined with the firm's contribution margin"Rust, Lemon & Zeithaml. (2004)
Grades: A, verified against the printed page of the primary source · B, primary source, text layer only · C, authoritative secondary · D, reported.
From the essay
Growth that compounds
What is CAC payback period?
CAC payback measures when cumulative gross margin recovers acquisition costs. State the margin boundary, churn and cash calendar.
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