5 Financial Metrics Every CPG Founder Should Track Weekly

Most CPG founders check their bank balance every day but look at their financials once a month — or once a quarter. That gap between instinct and information is where bad decisions get made. You do not need a 50-metric dashboard. You need five numbers, updated weekly, that tell you whether your business is healthy or heading toward trouble.

These are the five metrics we track with every CPG brand we work with. They take 30 minutes to update each week, and they will change the way you run your business.

1. Cash Runway

What It Is

Cash runway is the number of weeks (or months) until your bank account hits zero, based on your current burn rate. It is the single most important number for any CPG brand that is not yet profitable.

How to calculate it: Take your current cash balance and divide it by your average weekly net cash burn over the last 4 to 8 weeks. Net cash burn means total cash out minus total cash in — not just expenses, but actual cash movements including inventory purchases, collections, and debt service.

What Good Looks Like

Pre-profit CPG brands should maintain a minimum of 6 months of cash runway at all times. If you are planning a fundraise, start the process when you have 9 to 12 months of runway remaining — fundraising takes longer than you think, especially in CPG where investors want to see real traction data.

Red Flags

• Runway dropping below 4 months without an active fundraise or line of credit in place.
• Runway decreasing week over week for more than 4 consecutive weeks — this means your burn is accelerating.
• A large inventory purchase or co-man run in the next 30 days that will cut runway by more than 6 weeks in a single hit.

2. Gross Margin by SKU

What It Is

Your gross margin at the individual SKU level — revenue minus COGS for each product you sell. Not blended across your portfolio, but broken out so you can see which products are carrying the business and which are dragging it down.

How to calculate it: For each SKU, take net revenue (after any direct discounts or allowances) minus the fully-loaded COGS (ingredients, packaging, co-man fees, and inbound freight). Divide by net revenue to get the percentage.

What Good Looks Like

Target gross margins vary by category, but general benchmarks for CPG are:

• Beverages: 50 to 65 percent gross margin
• Snacks and shelf-stable food: 40 to 55 percent
• Refrigerated and frozen: 35 to 50 percent
• Personal care and household: 55 to 70 percent

If any SKU is consistently below 35 percent gross margin, you need to either raise the price, renegotiate your COGS, or seriously consider discontinuing it. Low-margin SKUs consume working capital and warehouse space that could be allocated to higher-performing products.

Red Flags

• Any SKU with gross margins below 30 percent — it is almost certainly unprofitable after trade spend and fulfillment.
• Gross margin on a SKU declining for 3 or more consecutive weeks without a known cause (like a temporary ingredient cost spike).
• A single SKU with significantly lower margins representing a disproportionate share of sales volume — it may be dragging your blended margin down more than you realize.

3. Inventory Weeks on Hand

What It Is

Inventory weeks on hand tells you how many weeks your current inventory will last at your current rate of sales. It is the bridge between your supply chain and your cash flow — too many weeks and you have cash trapped in product, too few and you risk stock-outs.

How to calculate it: Take your total inventory value at cost and divide it by your average weekly COGS over the last 4 weeks. The result is the number of weeks of inventory you have on hand.

What Good Looks Like

The target depends on your production lead times, but for most CPG brands:

• 4 to 8 weeks: Healthy range for most shelf-stable CPG brands. Enough buffer to absorb demand spikes without tying up excessive cash.
• 2 to 4 weeks: Lean — appropriate if you have short production lead times and reliable co-man capacity. Risky if your supply chain has any fragility.
• 8 to 12 weeks: Getting heavy. Acceptable only if you have long lead times (imported ingredients, seasonal availability) or a confirmed large order pipeline.
• 12+ weeks: You almost certainly have a cash problem. Unless there is a specific reason (a pre-built inventory for a major launch), this is too much capital tied up in product.

Red Flags

• Weeks on hand increasing while sales velocity is flat or declining — you are accumulating inventory without demand to support it.
• A specific SKU with more than 16 weeks on hand — it is a candidate for write-off or liquidation.
• Weeks on hand below 3 with a 4-week production lead time — you are at risk of stock-outs that could cost you retailer placements.

4. Customer Acquisition Cost

What It Is

Customer acquisition cost measures how much you spend to acquire a new customer. In CPG this applies differently across channels. For DTC, it is a straightforward marketing spend calculation. For retail, it encompasses trade spend, slotting fees, and demos needed to establish a product in a new door.

How to calculate it for DTC: Total marketing and advertising spend in a given week divided by the number of new customers acquired that week. Include all paid media, influencer costs, and any promotional discounts used to drive first purchases.

How to calculate it for retail (per door): Total cost to secure and launch in a new door — slotting fees, free fills, demo costs, and broker commissions — divided by the number of new doors opened. This is less of a weekly metric and more of a per-launch metric, but tracking the trend over time tells you whether your retail expansion is getting more or less efficient.

What Good Looks Like

• DTC CAC: Should be less than 30 percent of the first-order revenue. If your average order value is $40, your CAC should be under $12. For subscription or high-repeat-rate products, you can tolerate a higher CAC because the lifetime value justifies it — but track your payback period closely.
• Retail CAC per door: Varies enormously by channel, but track the total investment per door and measure it against the annual gross profit that door generates. You should recoup your per-door investment within 6 to 9 months.

Red Flags

• DTC CAC exceeding 50 percent of first-order revenue — you are paying more to acquire customers than you are earning from their first purchase. This only works if your repeat rate is very high.
• CAC increasing week over week for more than 4 weeks — your marketing efficiency is declining, which usually means you are saturating your current audience or your creative is fatiguing.
• High retail launch costs per door with low initial velocity — you may be expanding into doors or regions that do not have the consumer demand to support your product.

5. Accounts Receivable Aging

What It Is

Accounts receivable aging breaks down how much money is owed to you and how long it has been outstanding. In CPG, where retailer and distributor payment terms can be long and deductions are common, AR aging is your early warning system for cash collection problems.

How to track it: Bucket your outstanding receivables into aging categories — current (within terms), 1 to 30 days past due, 31 to 60 days past due, 61 to 90 days past due, and 90+ days past due. Track the total dollar amount and the percentage of total AR in each bucket.

What Good Looks Like

• 85 percent or more of AR should be current (within payment terms). If you are running mostly through distributors on net-30 terms, the majority of your AR should be under 30 days old.
• Less than 5 percent of AR should be 60+ days past due. Anything in this bucket needs active follow-up.
• 90+ day AR should be near zero. Anything here is at risk of becoming uncollectible and should be escalated immediately.

Red Flags

• Total AR growing faster than revenue — you are shipping more product but not collecting proportionally, which means your cash flow is deteriorating.
• A single large customer with a balance moving into the 60+ day bucket — this could signal financial trouble on their end or a dispute that needs resolution.
• Unexplained deductions appearing consistently — distributors and retailers sometimes take deductions that are not legitimate. If you are not tracking and disputing these, you are leaving money on the table. For some brands, deduction recovery can represent 2 to 4 percent of gross revenue.

Putting It All Together

These five metrics take 30 minutes to update once you have the systems in place. Set up a simple dashboard — a spreadsheet works fine — and update it every Monday morning. Review it with your leadership team or your fractional CFO weekly.

The power is not in any single metric but in seeing them together. When cash runway is shrinking, gross margins are flat, and AR aging is getting worse all at the same time, you have a clear and urgent problem. When inventory weeks on hand are dropping while velocity is increasing, you have a supply chain risk to manage. The five metrics together give you a complete picture of your financial health in a format you can digest in five minutes.

The CPG founders who track these numbers weekly make faster, better decisions. They catch problems before they become crises. And they walk into investor meetings and board conversations with the confidence that comes from actually knowing their numbers.