Unit Economics Model Template

Two people at the same company can compute customer acquisition cost from the same books and land thirteen times apart, and neither of them is wrong. Pellmore Analytics spent 3,771,000 landing 61 new customers in one quarter. Commission only over new logos gives 4,672. Paid media over new logos gives 13,770. The whole sales and marketing line over new logos gives 57,689. Fully loaded gives 61,820. Four of those have appeared on somebody's slide.

So this pack settles the definition first and writes it down. Every spend line goes into acquisition, existing customers, or already inside cost of revenue, with a reason on each row. The note bridges the agreed numerator back to the income statement, fixes the lifetime value window at a stated month count rather than a perpetuity, and gets signed before a single ratio is computed. Every sheet afterwards names the line it runs on, so a series that shifted because the denominator changed never reads as a series that shifted because the business did.

The second move is refusing to blend. Pellmore's blended 2026 payback is 21.7 months, which is real arithmetic on two unrelated populations: this year's acquisition cost, recovered out of a base mostly acquired in earlier years at a third of the price. Run it by acquisition quarter and payback goes 16, 16, 18, 20, 24, 27, 32, 37. The newest cohort has not recovered its cost inside three years, and the 13-week cash forecast pack is where that shows up as cash.