Shopify seller CFO services: run your brand on contribution margin, not revenue

The three numbers that actually run a DTC brand

Contribution margin per order tells you if the model works, CAC payback tells you if growth is affordable, and a 13-week cash view tells you if you will be alive to enjoy it. Everything else — ROAS screenshots, revenue milestones, follower counts — is commentary. We build these three from your Shopify reports, ad platforms, and accounting file, and we review them with you monthly on a fixed fee agreed after a discovery call.

For Canadian brands the wrinkle is that most of this happens in USD: American customers, US 3PLs, US ad platforms. Margins that look fine in a Shopify dashboard can move materially once currency and cross-border costs are applied consistently.

Contribution margin per order: the ladder, not one number

We measure margin in three steps, because each step answers a different question. CM1 asks whether the product is priced right, CM2 asks whether an order is worth shipping, and CM3 asks whether growth is self-funding at current ad efficiency. An illustrative ladder for an $85 order — replace every figure with your own:

CAC payback: when leaning into ads is rational

A brand with genuine repeat purchase can afford to acquire customers at a loss on the first order — but only if it knows how many months of CM2 it takes to earn the acquisition cost back, and only if cash reserves cover that gap at the planned spend level. One-and-done products get no such licence: CM3 must be positive on the first order or the ad account is a donation. We calculate payback from your actual cohort behaviour, not a platform's modelled LTV, and we set a maximum monthly ad budget from the cash forecast rather than from ambition. When CAC creeps up — and it always creeps — the ladder shows exactly how much room remains before growth starts consuming the balance sheet, which turns the scale-back decision from an argument into a threshold.

Inventory forecasting: buy for demand you can defend

Inventory is where DTC profit goes to hide, and both failure modes are expensive — stockouts kill the momentum your ads paid for, while over-buying converts your cash into a shelf of hope. We forecast so a purchase order is a claim you can defend with data rather than a round number that felt safe, built from three inputs:

• Sell-through by variant, not by product — size and colour curves matter because you stock out of the popular middle first while capital sits in the fringes.
• Real lead times with a buffer, measured from your last three purchase orders rather than the supplier's optimistic quote.
• The marketing calendar — a planned collaboration or Black Friday push changes demand in ways trailing averages cannot see.

Cross-border brands add another layer: stock positioned with a US 3PL changes duty treatment, sales tax exposure, and returns handling, which we cover on our cross-border page for Shopify sellers.

Raise or bootstrap — and the 13-week forecast that decides launches

Most Shopify brands should bootstrap; raising is only compelling when CM3 is reliably positive and the binding constraint is inventory capital, not ad efficiency. Raising money to fund negative-CM3 growth just burns someone else's cash faster. Between the extremes sit revenue-based options like Shopify Capital and supplier terms — tools we evaluate against the same cost-of-capital math as everything else. Whichever path you take, we maintain a 13-week cash forecast because DTC cash moves weekly, not monthly: launch inventory is paid for in week 1, ads ramp in week 6, and revenue lands in weeks 8 through 12. The forecast carries opening cash, ad spend by week, purchase-order deposits, payroll, GST/HST remittances, and payout timing on one sheet, and it gets updated with actuals every week so drift is caught while it is still a course correction. If a raise does make sense, share structure comes first — see our incorporation and compliance services before you sign a term sheet.