CFO services for e-commerce and retail software.
Software for merchants earns when merchants sell — through subscriptions, a share of gross merchandise volume, payments, or apps. Its churn is the merchant's survival rate, and its seasonality is the retail calendar. We bring finance leadership that has run finance for merchants and for the platforms that serve them.
The finance problems that define this segment.
Revenue scales with gross merchandise volume (GMV), not seats.
Take-rate and payment revenue move with merchants' sales, so forecasting is a merchant-volume model with seasonality.
Churn is merchant mortality.
Small merchants fail at high rates; logo churn of 3 to 5 percent monthly can be structural, and retention must be read by merchant size cohort.
Seasonality concentrates revenue and cost.
The fourth quarter carries a disproportionate share of volume, support cost, infrastructure cost, and cash.
App-store and partner revenue share.
Platforms that host third-party apps, or apps that live on larger platforms, have revenue-share terms that set the economics.
Payments revenue and gross-vs-net.
Platforms earning on payments face the same gross/net and reserve questions as fintechs.
Merchant acquisition is channel-sensitive.
Partners, agencies, app stores, and paid channels produce merchants with very different lifetime values.
Infrastructure cost scales with traffic.
Hosting and bandwidth follow merchant traffic peaks; margin in November is not margin in May.
How we run finance here.
- Revenue architecture — subscription, GMV-linked, payments, apps, and partner revenue separated with gross/net determined.
- Merchant cohort economics — retention, GMV growth, revenue per merchant, and contribution by acquisition channel and merchant size.
- Seasonal forecasting and cash — monthly volume curve, infrastructure and support cost to it, 13-week cash through peak.
- Gross margin with hosting, payments cost, and support in cost of revenue; margin by product and merchant tier.
- Partner and app revenue-share accounting reconciled to partner statements.
- Investor pack — annual recurring revenue (ARR), GMV, take rate, net revenue retention by cohort, customer acquisition cost (CAC) payback by channel, gross margin, burn and runway.
- Pricing and packaging — tier design against merchant size and GMV.
- Diligence readiness — metric definitions, cohort data, contract review.
Key metrics we build and report.
| Metric | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| ARR, GMV, and net take rate | Scale and monetization |
| Merchant retention by size cohort | Structural churn |
| Net revenue retention by cohort | Expansion vs. mortality |
| Revenue per merchant and contribution by channel | Acquisition quality |
| Gross margin by revenue type | True margin |
| Seasonal revenue and cost curve | Planning and cash |
| CAC payback by channel | Growth efficiency |
| Partner / app revenue share | Partner economics |
| Infrastructure cost per $1,000 GMV | Scalability |
| Payments reserve and chargeback exposure | Balance-sheet risk |
Worked example.
An inventory and order-management platform for mid-size merchants, $14.2M ARR plus $3.8M payments revenue, 1,900 merchants.
The plan: tiering and onboarding redesigned for the small cohort or de-emphasized in acquisition; seasonal cost and cash plan; agency channel scaled; payments restated net; cohort-based investor pack.
Where we’ve done this.
Storefront, checkout, and order-management platforms; marketplace seller tools; retail analytics; merchants that were the buyers; sponsor-backed commerce technology platforms. Pattern-level only.
Our churn looks terrible. Is that fixable?
Read it by merchant size; small-merchant churn is often structural and the answer is acquisition and pricing targeting, not retention spend.
How do we forecast through Q4?
A merchant-volume model with the retail calendar, infrastructure and support cost scaled to it, and cash through the peak.
Should we add payments?
We model take rate, processing cost, reserves, and the gross/net question before launch.
Can you help with pricing tiers?
Yes — tiers against merchant size and GMV, evaluated on retention and expansion.
Further reading.
Cost Per New Client: Measuring Intake and Marketing Like a Business
How behavioral health practices should calculate cost to acquire a new client, client lifetime value, and payback — by referral channel and payer — with a worked channel comparison.
Read article → InsightThe 13-Week Cash Forecast for a Behavioral Health Group
How to build and run a rolling 13-week cash forecast in a behavioral health practice — collections by payer, payroll timing, a worked example, and the decisions it makes possible.
Read article → InsightThe Monthly Management Report for a Behavioral Health Group: What Belongs In It
The metrics, statements, and commentary a behavioral health practice's monthly report should contain, with a sample page-one — and the order that makes it useful to owners and boards.
Read article →Insights for this vertical.
SaaS-specific insights are being published.
Tell us about the company.
One conversation about where the numbers stand and what the next stage needs from finance. We will tell you where we can help, where you need someone else, and what it would cost.
The information on this page is provided for general informational purposes and does not constitute accounting, tax, legal, or investment advice. Revenue recognition, sales tax, and investor reporting matters for software companies depend on contract terms, jurisdiction, and the specific facts of the business. Figures in examples are illustrative. See our full Legal Disclaimer.