For e-commerce and DTC brands
Ad spend goes out today. Know what comes back, and when.
Orders, returns, marketplace fees, ad budgets and stock purchases all hit cash on different days. Uniflow connects your ad accounts, payments and ledger, then forecasts the month as a funnel from spend to orders to cash in the bank.
- Campaign spend to reach, clicks, add-to-cart and orders, with seasonality
- Cost of sales per order or as a percentage of sales, including fees and returns
- Amazon Ads, Meta Ads, Stripe, PayPal and Square feeding one forecast
Free before revenue. No credit card. Read-only accounting access.
E-commerce finance
Why e-commerce cash is harder than e-commerce revenue
Top-line growth is easy to buy. Whether it survives fees, returns and the next inventory order is what the forecast has to answer.
Ads are a cash outflow before they are a cost
Meta and Amazon bill continuously; orders convert days later and payouts land after that. A forecast that nets ad spend against revenue in the same month hides a real cash gap.
Stock ties up cash for months
A Q4 purchase order goes out in August. Modelled as cost of sales in November it looks fine; modelled as cash in August it may not be.
Margin is a stack of small percentages
Payment fees, marketplace commission, shipping, returns and discounts each take a slice. Contribution margin has to be built from those pieces, not assumed.
Inside the product
How Uniflow models an e-commerce brand
Choose e-commerce at onboarding and the workspace starts from online-retail streams, order-based costs and a growth funnel built around campaigns.
- 01
Revenue streams
Pre-loaded with subscription boxes, dropshipping, private label, digital products, membership fees, affiliate, advertising and partnership income. Add your own product lines as further streams.
Example: Core range at £46 average order, subscription box at £29 a month, 2.4% monthly churn.
- 02
Cost of sales
Costs per sale, as a percentage of sales, or fixed by period, so landed cost, fees, packaging and shipping can be separated.
Example: Landed cost 38% of sales, payment fees 2.9%, shipping £4.20 per order, returns 6%.
- 03
Growth
Campaigns with reach, click-through, product views, add-to-cart and purchase rates, plus per-month seasonality and campaign cost per conversion.
Example: £18k a month across Meta and Amazon, 2.0% click-through, 30% add-to-cart, Black Friday at +40%.
- 04
Inventory and capex
Stock purchases and equipment are planned as dated cash outflows in the expenses section, separate from the cost of sales that recognises them.
Example: £86k purchase order in October, warehouse racking as capex in March.
- 05
Cash and tax
Cash balance, burn, VAT and corporation tax reserves and a rolling forecast update from your ledger and payment providers.
Example: Runway shown against the next stock order date so the buy is never a surprise.
What to watch
The numbers investors and lenders will ask for
Contribution margin per order
Revenue minus landed cost, fees, shipping and returns. The number that tells you whether growth is worth buying.
See the definitionBlended CAC
Total campaign spend divided by new customers, from the growth section, tracked against actual ad costs.
Try the free calculatorRepeat rate and LTV
Subscription and returning-customer revenue modelled as their own streams so LTV comes from your data.
Try the free calculatorInventory cash cycle
Days from paying a supplier to being paid by a customer. Drives the working-capital gap in the forecast.
See the definitionReturn on ad spend
Modelled per campaign, so a channel that reaches many people but converts poorly is visible.
See the definitionRunway to next stock buy
Cash months at current burn, marked against purchase-order dates rather than an abstract horizon.
Try the free calculatorConnections
Tools that feed the forecast
Connecting is free on every plan and read-only. Paid plans change how often data syncs.
How it works
Set up in an afternoon
- 01
Pick your business type
Onboarding asks what kind of company you run and loads the revenue streams, cost-of-sales drivers and departments that fit it. You rename or delete what does not apply.
- 02
Connect what you already use
Accounting, payments and CRM connections are read-only and free on every plan. Historic figures come in; the forecast starts from real numbers rather than a blank sheet.
- 03
Run the month from one screen
Cash, burn, tax reserves and the rolling forecast update as data syncs. Scenarios, hiring plans and fundraising sit next to the actuals so decisions are made on the same page.
FAQ
E-commerce questions
Yes. Stock buys are entered as dated expenses so they hit the cash forecast when you pay the supplier, while cost of sales per order recognises the cost as products sell. The two views together show the working-capital gap.
The growth section models each campaign as a funnel: spend, reach, clicks, product views, add-to-cart and purchases, with seasonal adjustments by month. Connected Amazon Ads and Meta Ads accounts supply the actual spend to compare against.
Cost of sales can be a percentage of sales or a fixed amount per sale, so commission, payment fees, shipping and returns are separate lines rather than one blended margin.
Payments sync from Stripe, PayPal and Square, ads from Amazon Ads and Meta Ads, and the ledger from Xero, QuickBooks, FreeAgent or Zoho Books. Order-level data from other platforms can be entered as actual sales.
Free before revenue with no time limit. Once you are trading, Scale is priced on monthly revenue, from £39 or $49 a month for stores under £10k a month.
Keep reading
Other business types
Not on the list? The templates are a starting point. Tell us what you run
Forecast the funnel, not just the top line
Connect your ad accounts and payments. See spend, orders and cash on one timeline before the next campaign goes live.
No credit card. First forecast in about 30 minutes.