Find the advertising spend your margin can support

Calculate an acquisition ceiling before increasing your budget.

Maximum acquisition cost is the money left after product, shipping, packaging, returns allowance and fees, before advertising. In the sample order it is $25.05. Spending that amount to acquire one order leaves zero contribution before allocated overhead.

With revenue of $55, break-even revenue ROAS is 55 ÷ 25.05, or about 2.20. This ratio includes shipping charged to the buyer and excludes fixed overhead. An advertising platform may report a different revenue basis, attribution window or set of purchases.

A higher ROAS than this threshold produces positive contribution only if the entered per-order assumptions hold. Customer lifetime value, repeat purchases, tax, refunds beyond your allowance and the accuracy of attribution are outside this model.

If maximum acquisition cost is zero or negative, the current order cannot support any positive advertising spend. A negative ratio would be misleading, so the calculator shows an explanation instead.