Most dashboards fail before a single tile is drawn, because nobody worked out the numbers first. You cannot lay out a board around metrics you have not defined, and half the arguments in a review meeting come down to two people computing the same figure two different ways. This dashboard metrics calculator settles that. Punch your raw numbers into the fields below and it works out the eight figures that belong on almost any business board, then read on for what each one means and the exact formula behind it.
Everything runs in your browser and nothing is sent anywhere. The LTV here is revenue based and assumes recurring revenue, so it uses ARPU divided by the monthly churn rate. For a true figure multiply it by your gross margin, and treat it as not applicable for one-off purchases where nobody churns.
Now the reference. Each of these earns a spot on a business dashboard because it changes a decision, and each has one correct formula. Compute them the same way every time and the review meeting gets a lot shorter. The example numbers below match the calculator’s starting values, a small subscription business.
Conversion rate
Conversion rate is new customers divided by visitors, as a percentage. It answers whether the traffic you worked to get is turning into anything. Ten thousand visitors and 200 new customers converts at 2 percent, which is ordinary for most stores and poor for a warm email list. The number only means something next to a benchmark, so track it against your own last period before you compare it to anyone else.
CAC, the cost to win one customer
Customer acquisition cost is total marketing spend divided by the customers that spend brought in. Forty-five thousand dollars of spend for 200 customers is a CAC of $225. This is the number that quietly decides whether a business is a business, because every customer has to be worth more than they cost to acquire, and the gap between those two figures is where profit lives.
ARPU and AOV
Average revenue per user is revenue divided by customers. On a store it is the same as average order value when each customer buys once, the typical size of a single purchase. On a subscription it is the revenue one account brings in a period. It is the building block for lifetime value, so if this figure is soft, everything downstream of it is soft too.
ROAS
Return on ad spend is revenue divided by the money you spent to earn it. A ROAS of 2 means every dollar of spend returned two. The calculator flags anything under 1, and for a store selling one-off orders that flag is a real warning. For a subscription it can be normal in a single month, because you spend up front to win a customer who pays you back over many months, which is exactly what the LTV to CAC ratio measures instead. ROAS belongs on the marketing board, which the marketing dashboard guide covers in full.
Churn and average lifespan
Monthly churn is the share of customers who leave in a month. Its overlooked twin is average lifespan, which is simply one divided by the churn rate: lose 5 percent a month and the average customer sticks around 20 months. Churn is the most expensive number most teams underwatch, because a point of churn compounds against you the same way interest compounds for you. The calculator flags churn above 5 percent for that reason.
LTV and the ratio that matters most
Lifetime value is ARPU divided by the churn rate, which spreads a customer’s periodic value across how long they stay. Sixty dollars of ARPU against 5 percent churn works out to an LTV of $1,200. One honest caveat: that figure is built on revenue, not profit, so for a real number you multiply it by your gross margin. Then comes the one investors ask for first, the LTV to CAC ratio, lifetime value over acquisition cost. Our example lands at roughly 5 to 1. Below 3 to 1 the calculator flags it, because that is the rough line where a business is spending too much to win customers who do not stay long enough to pay it back. Above 3 to 1 you have room to grow. Well above it, you may be underspending on growth.
From the numbers to the board
Working out the metrics is step one. Step two is laying them out so a person reads the important one first, which is the whole craft covered in the pillar on dashboard design and the difference between a metric and a true KPI. If you would rather not wire these up in a spreadsheet from scratch, a set of HTML dashboard templates comes with the tiles for figures like these already built, so you drop your numbers in instead of formatting cells for an afternoon. Either way, define the math first, then draw the board around it.