Altynai, who runs marketing at an analytics reporting service, asks for 700,000 ₸ for a new launch: 600,000 ₸ for advertising and 100,000 ₸ for preparation. The accountant, Meruert, opens last month: 10,800,000 ₸ of revenue and a 200,000 ₸ result before tax. "You are asking for more than we would earn in three months like that. What do we get, and when does the money come back?" A table of cheap leads does not answer that.
The service is the same as in marketing in the P&L: 180 companies paid for and received the package at 60,000 ₸ a month, variable fulfilment costs 20,000 ₸ per company, and contribution is 40,000 ₸. The figures are made up. In the example, last month counts as an actual result, and the new launch and its payments as scenarios.
Establish the starting result
10,800,000 ₸ of revenue minus 3,600,000 ₸ of fulfilment is 7,200,000 ₸ of contribution. After 200,000 ₸ of advertising and 6,800,000 ₸ of other fixed expenses, 200,000 ₸ is left before tax. The fixed expenses are the whole team's payroll, rent and shared services. Advertising and client work are counted above, each in its own row.
Contribution is revenue minus variable costs, a calculation described in ACCA's article. For the decision, what matters is where each cost goes. Work paid for per connected client goes in the variable row. Team salaries stay in the fixed row until new volume forces them up.
The picture shows a different business: from 10 million ₸ of revenue, 7 million ₸ of variable costs leave 3 million ₸ of contribution, which is 30%, and after 2 million ₸ of marketing, 1 million ₸. The service's package contributes 40,000 out of 60,000 ₸, two thirds, so do not carry someone else's percentage into your own calculation.
From revenue to the remainder after marketing
A separate example with a 30% contribution rate
Revenue
10 million ₸
Deduct 7 million ₸ variable costs
Contribution
3 million ₸ before marketing
Deduct 2 million ₸ marketing
Remainder
1 million ₸
Before fixed expenses and taxes
The 30% rate belongs to this example. The service package contributes 40,000 ₸ of its 60,000 ₸.
Define the baseline for the new budget
A launch is compared not with zero but with what would have happened without it. In the baseline, the service carries on as usual: existing advertising, sales and service. The new launch gets its own 700,000 ₸ and has to bring clients on top of that plan. If you simply add up every payment after the launch, you will include people who would have come anyway.
For the calculation, assume the new flow fits current capacity: fulfilment stays at 20,000 ₸ per client and fixed expenses do not change. It is a bold assumption: the team already serves 180 companies, and in the final exam its limit is 182. Even ten new clients will not fit. That is why Yernar, who is responsible for delivery, confirms capacity before Talgat approves the budget. If a new hire, a licence of its own or an extra shift is needed, another row appears in the calculation.
The 100,000 ₸ of preparation is already included in the 700,000 ₸. Do not add it a second time to fulfilment or to the general marketing row. The existing 200,000 ₸ of advertising stays in the baseline. Then Meruert, when she builds the full P&L, can combine the baseline and incremental calculations without deducting anything twice.
Three first-month scenarios
The table covers only the first paid and delivered month of the new clients. No probabilities are assigned to the scenarios. For now we assume the launch brought all of these clients; once it has run, that will have to be checked.
| Scenario | Additional new clients | Revenue | Fulfilment | Contribution | After 700,000 ₸ launch costs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unfavourable | 10 | 600,000 ₸ | 200,000 ₸ | 400,000 ₸ | -300,000 ₸ |
| Base | 20 | 1,200,000 ₸ | 400,000 ₸ | 800,000 ₸ | 100,000 ₸ |
| Favourable | 30 | 1,800,000 ₸ | 600,000 ₸ | 1,200,000 ₸ | 500,000 ₸ |
At 40,000 ₸ of contribution, the launch costs are covered in the first month if 18 additional clients come: 700,000 / 40,000 = 17.5, and clients are rounded up. Eighteen bring 720,000 ₸ of contribution, a margin of just 20,000 ₸. This is a threshold: below it, the launch loses money in its first month. It says nothing about how many clients will actually come, and it is not permission to spend.
The base scenario has 100,000 ₸ of headroom. If the new volume needs another 100,000 ₸ of fixed expenses, the headroom is gone. If fulfilment rises to 25,000 ₸, contribution per client falls to 35,000 ₸, and twenty clients bring exactly 700,000 ₸. That shows which assumptions the decision depends on most.
Where the forecast comes from
Every number in the request needs a basis. You support audience size with your own list or with demand you have already seen. The share of suitable enquiries comes from similar cohorts with the same offer. Time to payment comes from the CRM. Fulfilment cost is estimated by whoever will do the work, which here means Yernar.
The past average cost of a client is a good starting point, but a new budget may buy different demand. In the original month, 200,000 ₸ of advertising brought ten new clients. 600,000 ₸ need not bring another thirty: traffic, audience and contact frequency will change. In the scenarios, explain where the ten, twenty and thirty come from, instead of stretching last month's row with a formula.
Look at whether the assumptions agree with each other, too. If the sales forecast depends on a discount, the 60,000 ₸ price in the table is already wrong. If clients from Astana need costlier support, the old 20,000 ₸ of fulfilment will need recalculating as well. That is exactly what makes scenarios valuable: they expose these links.
Attribution and incremental effect
UTM tags and the CRM will show which enquiries are linked to the launch and which of them reached payment. But a buyer may have known the service already and planned to write to Zhanar directly. Attributed revenue distributes sales according to a rule. The launch's effect is what changed because of it.
If the decision needs an estimate of the effect, choose the method before the start: a comparison with a control group or another justified approach. It has its own unit, timing, sample size and limits, as in HADI. If there is not enough volume for the precision you need, the uncertainty stays in the report. Twenty attributed payments do not turn into twenty additional clients just because the number matches the base scenario.
Infrastructure work is accepted differently. Reconciling missing payments, for example, improves the reporting without adding a single sale. Research may end in a decision to drop an expensive integration. A budget like that still has a task, costs, timing and a completion criterion, and nobody needs to invent a weekly ROAS for it.
When cash is needed
In the base scenario, the 100,000 ₸ surplus appears only after twenty clients have received the service and paid. Suppose the 700,000 ₸ for the launch is paid upfront, then 400,000 ₸ goes on fulfilment, and clients transfer 1,200,000 ₸ only after the service is delivered. Until they pay, the launch needs 1,100,000 ₸ on top of the service's normal cash.
| Point in the illustrative schedule | Initiative cash movement | Cumulative balance from zero |
|---|---|---|
| Advertising and preparation paid | -700,000 ₸ | -700,000 ₸ |
| Fulfilment paid | -400,000 ₸ | -1,100,000 ₸ |
| Client payments received | 1,200,000 ₸ | 100,000 ₸ |
This schedule covers only the additional launch. The company's ordinary commitments run alongside it in the overall cash plan. If clients pay in advance or costs are spread over time, the deepest dip will be different. That is why Meruert needs dates; the final profit figure alone is not enough for her.
Conditions for releasing the next part
Write into the request, in advance, what counts as grounds to continue: data is collected correctly, the offer can be delivered, the audience is the one you need, spending stays within agreed limits. When to look at payments depends on how long the deal takes. Until then, leads help you spot a failure, but they do not replace the clients' first-month result.
Do not confuse stopping because of harm, an error or unavailable delivery with picking the winner of an experiment. If a payment cannot be linked to a variant, or a manager promises a feature that does not exist, fix the problem first. Money already spent on preparation is no reason to keep spending if the goal no longer needs it.
Exercise: a last-minute discount
Put together a request for one initiative on your own project: the amount, what it is made of, the plan without it, three contribution scenarios, a cash schedule, an owner and the conditions for continuing. Then recalculate the service's base scenario: at the last minute Talgat agreed to give the twenty new clients a 10% discount, while fulfilment and the budget stayed the same.
The price becomes 54,000 ₸ and contribution per client 34,000 ₸. Twenty clients bring 680,000 ₸ of contribution, so after the 700,000 ₸ launch the result is minus 20,000 ₸. Covering the launch needs 21 additional clients: 21 × 34,000 = 714,000 ₸, a margin of 14,000 ₸. The discount is already accounted for in the price, so it is not deducted again. Now Altynai and Zhanar have to explain why the discount will bring enough clients, or rethink the launch.
Keep repeat months in a row of their own. Until clients renew the package, they are a scenario of future contribution. They enter actual results after payment and service delivery, under the company's financial reporting method.