I’m building a subscription business reporting stack for CAC and payback, what should I track?

For a subscription business reporting stack focused on CAC and payback, you want to track the full chain from spend → lead/customer acquisition → revenue → retention → payback.

Here’s a practical set of metrics to include.

1) Acquisition spend

Track spend by channel and time period.

• Marketing spend: paid search, paid social, display, affiliates, sponsorships, events
• Sales spend: SDR/AE salaries, commissions, tooling, outbound costs
• All-in acquisition spend: marketing + sales + agency + software + contractor costs
• Capex vs opex if relevant, but most SaaS teams use operating acquisition spend

2) Funnel volume and conversion

You need this to understand CAC efficiency.

• Impressions / clicks
• Leads / MQLs / SQLs
• Opportunities
• Trials / demos
• Closed-won customers
• Conversion rates at each stage
• Time to convert by stage and channel

3) CAC metrics

These are the core outputs.

• Blended CAC = total acquisition spend / new customers acquired
• CAC by channel = channel spend / customers from that channel
• CAC by segment = SMB vs mid-market vs enterprise, geo, product line, etc.
• CAC by cohort = by month/quarter of acquisition
• Sales CAC vs marketing CAC if you want to separate functions
• Fully loaded CAC = includes salaries, commissions, overhead allocation, tools, agencies, and bonuses

4) Revenue quality of acquired customers

CAC alone is not enough; you need the revenue side.

• ARR / MRR per new customer
• Average selling price (ASP)
• Gross revenue retention
• Net revenue retention
• Logo retention
• Expansion revenue
• Churn revenue / customer churn
• Contract term length
• Discounting / concessions
• Time to first revenue
• Activation rate if there’s a product-led motion

5) Payback metrics

This tells you how fast you recover acquisition cost.

• CAC payback period
  Usually:
  CAC / monthly gross margin per customer
• Gross margin
• Gross profit per customer per month
• Contribution margin if you include fulfillment/support costs
• Payback by channel and cohort
• Payback by segment
• Payback under different churn assumptions

6) Retention and lifetime value

These help contextualize CAC and payback.

• Monthly churn
• Logo churn
• Revenue churn
• Customer lifetime
• LTV
• LTV:CAC
• LTV by channel / segment / cohort
• Cohort retention curves

7) Efficiency and rule-of-thumb metrics

Useful for leadership dashboards.

• CAC as % of first-year ARR
• CAC payback in months
• LTV:CAC ratio
• Magic number if applicable for SaaS sales efficiency
• Rule of 40 if you also want growth efficiency

8) Reporting cuts you should support

Make sure the data model can slice these metrics by:

• Channel
• Campaign
• Geography
• Product / plan
• Customer segment
• Sales rep / team
• Acquisition cohort
• Start date / close date
• Billing cycle
• Contract term

9) Data sources to connect

Typical stack inputs:

• Ad platforms: Google Ads, Meta, LinkedIn, etc.
• CRM: Salesforce, HubSpot
• Marketing automation: Marketo, HubSpot, Pardot
• Billing/subscription system: Stripe, Chargebee, Recurly, Zuora
• Product analytics: Amplitude, Mixpanel
• Finance/ERP: NetSuite, QuickBooks, Sage
• HR/payroll: for sales and marketing labor allocation
• Data warehouse: Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift

10) Important definitions to lock down early

CAC reporting often breaks because definitions differ. Decide up front:

• What counts as a “new customer”?
• Do upsells count toward new ARR or expansion?
• Are self-serve and sales-led customers separated?
• Which costs are included in acquisition spend?
• What is the attribution model?
• Do you use bookings, ARR, or cash revenue?
• Do you measure payback on gross margin or contribution margin?

Suggested dashboard structure

A good subscription CAC/payback dashboard usually has:

1. Executive summary

   • CAC
   • payback
   • LTV:CAC
   • new ARR
   • gross margin

2. Channel performance

   • spend
   • customers
   • CAC
   • payback

3. Cohort analysis

   • CAC by cohort
   • retention curves
   • revenue expansion
   • payback trajectory

4. Funnel health

   • lead-to-customer conversion
   • pipeline velocity
   • stage conversion

5. Unit economics

   • gross margin
   • LTV
   • payback
   • retention

If you want, I can also give you:

• a recommended data model/schema
• a set of SQL metrics definitions
• or a dashboard spec for Looker/Tableau/Power BI.