Ecommerce Pro Forma Template

Once the Assumptions sheet is dialed in, review the Unit Economics sheet and verify that your contribution margin per order is positive across all channels before you add marketing spend. This is the ecommerce founder's gut-check: if product cost, fulfillment, payment fees, and returns together consume more than 70–75% of your selling price, you don't have enough contribution margin to fund customer acquisition at any meaningful scale. Then move to the Customer Acquisition sheet and enter your planned marketing spend by channel with realistic CAC estimates — use actual CPM and conversion rate data if you have it, or category benchmarks if you're starting from scratch. The LTV:CAC and payback period outputs will tell you quickly whether your acquisition model is fundable.

The financial metrics that define ecommerce health are gross margin (30–55% for most product categories; beauty and apparel run higher, electronics lower), contribution margin after fulfillment and fees (target above 20–25% to have room for profitable marketing spend), CAC payback period (under 12 months for most brands; under 6 months for consumer subscription), and LTV:CAC ratio (above 3:1 is the standard investor threshold). Amazon and marketplace revenue looks attractive for volume but often runs 15–25 points lower in net contribution margin than DTC revenue once you account for referral fees (8–15%), FBA fees ($3–8 per unit), advertising cost of sale (10–20% for competitive categories), and the absence of customer data ownership. A pro forma that models channels separately — not just blended revenue — surfaces this tradeoff before you've built a business dependent on a channel that doesn't support sustainable margins.