Entering customer acquisition cost for a subscription

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is the amount it costs your company to obtain a new customer. It's an especially important metric for software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies. The customer acquisition cost is considered a marketing expense. So to represent this cost in your forecast, you'll use an Expense entry. 

Customer acquisition cost as a percentage of revenue

LivePlan can't calculate your customer acquisition cost for you, but if you have a sense of what percentage of your subscription revenue goes to customer acquisition you can build the forecast model to reflect this. 

1. In the Forecast tab, click Expenses:
   
2. Click the Add Expense button:
   
3. Name the expense and select Marketing as the type:
   
4. Select % of a specific revenue stream, choose the subscription revenue stream you've already created, and then enter your percentage:
   
5. Set a start date for the expense, then click Save & Close.

Customer acquisition cost as expense amounts

If you haven't established a percentage of revenue for your customer acquisition cost, you can instead create an Expense entry using the Varying amounts over time input. This allows you to enter your customer acquisition cost expense for each month.

1. In the Forecast tab, click Expenses:
   
2. Click the Add Expense button:
   
3. Name the expense and select Marketing as the type:
   
4. Choose Varying amounts over time, and enter the expense amount for each month:
   
5. Click Save & Close

If a more automated calculation of customer acquisition costs would be a helpful feature for you, please contact us and tell us more about your needs.