Margin Bench / Understand the numbers
Margin Bench guides
Practical guides for ecommerce & profit, marketing returns, saas & retention, with worked examples and tools for your own assumptions.
Start with the decision you need to make
A calculator can divide two numbers correctly and still answer the wrong question. These guides explain what belongs in each input, which denominator matters, and what remains outside the result. They are written for people using Margin Bench's ecommerce & profit and marketing returns and saas & retention tools, not as substitutes for records or professional advice.
Each guide includes illustrative arithmetic you can follow without running a tool. Examples are not observed customer results, market benchmarks, or recommended targets. Use the linked calculators to replace those assumptions with your own consistent figures.
Margin vs. markup: choose the right pricing base
Am I adding a percentage to cost or keeping a share of revenue?
Read the worked examplesROAS vs. profit: what ad revenue leaves behind
Does the revenue attributed to advertising cover the costs of those sales?
Read the worked examplesCustomer economics: connect CAC, LTV, and retention
What does a customer cost to acquire, contribute over time, and take to repay?
Read the worked examplesA useful order of operations
- Define the scope and units: one surface, pay period, campaign, cohort, or delivery file.
- Match inputs to that scope and name allowances, costs, events, or exclusions.
- Choose the measure that answers your question, then check its assumptions.
- Change an uncertain input and see whether the decision still makes sense.
For decimal entry, rounding, and undefined results, read the calculation methodology. Browse the Ecommerce & profit hub when you have a defined question and matching inputs.