Unit economics should explain whether growth creates value before fixed overhead and financing—not merely produce a favourable ratio.
CFO and growth leader
Monthly by cohort
Create a metric dictionary.
Marketing and sales cost ledger.
Customer acquisition cost needs a defined denominator and cost pool. Sales payroll, commissions, media, agencies, discounts and onboarding costs may be included differently; the definition must remain stable.
Contribution margin should subtract costs that vary with the transaction or customer, including payment fees, delivery, support, cloud usage, incentives, refunds and credit losses where relevant.
LTV is especially sensitive to retention and margin assumptions. A mature cohort is stronger evidence than annualising the first few months. Payback should reflect cash timing rather than only accounting revenue.
| Control | What it covers | Operating rule |
|---|---|---|
| CAC | Acquisition cost divided by new customers or accounts. | Define channel and attribution. |
| Contribution | Revenue less transaction-variable cost. | Reconcile to gross margin. |
| Retention | Customers or revenue retained by cohort. | Separate expansion and churn. |
| Payback | Time for contribution to recover acquisition cost. | Use cash-realisation timing. |
Do not optimise one ratio in isolation. Cutting customer support can raise short-term contribution while reducing retention and long-term value.
Use unit economics to set channel limits, pricing, product investment and growth pace. The board should see the assumptions that make the model work.
Document the decision, owner, due date and evidence expected. A verbal explanation should be converted into a board note, approved working, contract amendment, portal acknowledgement or reconciliation before the item is treated as closed.
Rules, forms, thresholds and interpretations can change. The operating team should use the latest official source and the actual company facts instead of copying a control from another entity or prior year.
Ask four questions: Is the obligation or accounting treatment applicable? Has the underlying transaction been completely recorded? Does the evidence agree with the books and portal? Has an independent reviewer challenged the exception?
The review should distinguish a timing difference from an error, a judgement from a missing document, and a control failure from a one-time operational delay. Repeated small exceptions deserve root-cause action because they often become material during audit, fundraising, notice or distress.
The operating record should connect the control stages—cac, contribution, retention, payback—to the same transaction population. If the source list, accounting ledger, tax return, board record and management dashboard use different populations, the review can appear complete while exceptions remain outside the test.
Management should define an exception threshold, but the threshold must not hide repeated failures. A small error occurring every month can signal weak master data, unclear ownership or a broken interface. The reviewer should record root cause, immediate correction and preventive action separately.
Closure requires evidence. At minimum, the file should show who prepared the work, who reviewed it, which source documents were used, what differences remained and when the next follow-up is due. Screenshots without context or spreadsheets without source references are not a durable control record.
Finance should reconcile the operational schedule to the general ledger and explain every reconciling item by amount, age and owner. Manual journals, overrides and post-close changes deserve heightened review because they can bypass the normal transaction flow.
The board view should separate reported results from estimates and management metrics. When a KPI does not follow the statutory accounting framework, provide a stable definition and a bridge to the closest financial statement line so the measure cannot be changed silently.