How to Calculate Unit Economics for Your SaaS in 5 Minutes (Free Template)

Why Unit Economics Matter

As a SaaS founder, your Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and Lifetime Value (LTV) are the two numbers that investors care about most. If LTV > 3x CAC, you have a healthy business. But many founders build their first models in Excel manually and make errors.

The 5 Components You Need

1. CAC = (Marketing Spend + Sales Costs) / New Customers
2. LTV = ARPU × Gross Margin % × (1 / Churn Rate)
3. Payback Period = CAC / (ARPU × Gross Margin %)
4. Gross Margin = (Revenue - COGS) / Revenue
5. Cohort Analysis — track retention monthly

Build vs Buy

You can build this from scratch, but it takes 4+ hours to get formulas right. Or you can grab my Unit Economics Builder — a Google Sheets template with all formulas pre-built and sample data included.

Check it out here

It includes:

• CAC/LTV calculators with charts
• Payback period dashboard
• Cohort retention tracker
• 5 interactive tabs

Summary

Unit economics shouldn't be hard. Grab the template and focus on growing your business.

This post is part of MicroTools Studio — building tools for founders and investors.