Wrenfield Sparkling Co. is a seven-year-old brand of low-sugar botanical sodas in 12 oz cans, with $14.20M of gross sales over the last twelve months and a founder who put the problem to me in one breath: "We grew 39%, I raised a million dollars, and I still can't see how we make payroll in June." The dashboard is built to answer that question in a single sitting, so here's how I'd walk the founder through it a few weeks before the summer build starts.
The scorecard has eight cards, and I open on the red one: revenue up 39%, cash down $192K, after $1.0M of outside money from a $750K SAFE and a $250K family loan. Cash went from $812K to $620K over the year, which means the business used about $1.19M of cash before the outside money is counted.
Adjusted EBITDA is $0.18M, or 1.3% of gross sales. A switch at the top flips every card between Revenue view and Cash view, and the founder usually goes quiet the first time the wholesale card changes from a growth rate into a working capital number.
My read: demand is healthy, and the growth pattern turns sales into receivables and inventory much faster than it turns them back into cash – the rest of the walkthrough is about finding exactly where that happens.
Wholesale is 61% of sales and growing 65% a year, so it's the channel the whole team is proud of. The contribution tab takes DTC, wholesale and marketplace side by side from gross sales down through discounts, deductions, trade spend, platform and payment fees, COGS, outbound freight and fulfillment, channel-specific acquisition spend, and the financing cost of each channel's receivable days at an 11% cost of capital.
Fully loaded, DTC keeps 37.8%, marketplace 31.5% and wholesale 22.6%. Wholesale brings in 61% of the sales and 50% of the $3.92M of contribution dollars. Deductions and chargebacks take 8.0% of wholesale gross sales ($688K), and trade spend takes another 12.0% ($1,032K).
My read: wholesale is still worth growing, but at 22.6% it can't fund its own growth, and I'd want deductions managed with the same attention the team already gives COGS.
The cash conversion cycle runs 47 days for DTC, 84 for marketplace and 119 for wholesale. Distributors are on net 60 and pay at 74 days on average, and they take their deductions before they pay.
At 119 days, every $1M of new wholesale sales ties up roughly $326K of working capital before a dollar of it comes home. The AR aging by customer shows deductions in dispute on a separate line, because those are dollars a distributor has kept that nobody on our side has agreed to yet.
My read: the 14 days past terms are probably the cheapest cash in the business to recover, since at today's wholesale volume they hold about $330K that distributors already agreed to pay sooner.
The tariff calculator takes four inputs: the tariff rate, the imported share of landed cost, the price increase, and an illustrative price elasticity. The tariff rate is your input – we don't forecast trade policy, and the dashboard says so on screen.
At a 25% input, landed cost goes from $0.510 to $0.544 a can. Covering that cost alone takes a 3.1% wholesale price increase. Holding contribution dollars per case takes 4.3%, and holding contribution percentage takes 6.6%, because deductions, trade spend and freight all scale with price and take their share of every increase.
My read: the instinct is to ask buyers for the first number, and I think the founder should walk in with 4.3% as the floor and know what the volume risk looks like at 6.6% before anyone gets on the phone.
The forecast opens in May with $0.62M of cash. Weeks 1–4 are actuals and locked, and weeks 5–13 are forecast, so the scenario conversation never moves a closed week.
Receipts come in by channel, and disbursements are broken out for the co-packer, cans and sleeves, tariff, freight, marketing, trade, payroll, overhead and two one-time items. Early summer is the pinch: the brand builds inventory and pays slotting for summer while distributors are still paying for winter and spring. Cash bottoms out in week 12, late July, at –$484K against a $0.40M operating floor, which is an $884K funding gap.
My read: $884K is the number to raise against, and the facility needs to be signed and funding by week 5, because a line that closes in July arrives after the hole has already opened.
The debt bridge puts four options side by side, each with its own advance math, illustrative all-in cost, covenants and the week it runs short. An ABL on receivables and inventory, at a $1.25M commitment against a $3.10M borrowing base at week 12, closes the full $884K and leaves $366K of excess availability at the worst week against a $250K covenant minimum.
Factoring also closes the full $884K, at a higher illustrative cost. PO financing reaches $725K and runs short from week 9. A term loan could fund $884K, but debt service coverage comes in at 0.45x against a 1.25x covenant, so the bank would be on the hook for a loan the business can't carry.
My read: the ABL fits Wrenfield's shape because its borrowing base grows with the same receivables that cause the squeeze, and $116K of covenant headroom is thin enough that I'd want the collections work in place before signing.
The exit lens runs two paths over 24 months: wholesale growth at today's margins, and wholesale growth with deductions and terms fixed. Each shows revenue, contribution dollars, working capital absorbed and enterprise value at an illustrative revenue multiple banded by gross margin, and it links to our exit readiness demo.
My read: a buyer pays for contribution dollars and marks down working capital that grows faster than sales, so I think fixing deductions and terms does more for value than another year of 65% growth at a 22.6% margin.
The "+ Deck" button has a lender pack preset: the 13-week cash forecast, the borrowing base, channel margin, projections and a next-steps slide. The speaker notes record which scenario was active when the deck was built.
My read: the banker sees the same numbers the founder saw, with the scenario named, which tends to make the credit conversation shorter and the questions better.
We start with read-only connections to your accounting system, your ecommerce platform and your marketplace seller account, plus distributor remittances and the backup for each deduction. Then we rebuild 24 months of history on one contribution basis by channel, with every deduction coded by type and every receivable aged by customer.
After that, the dashboard refreshes after each month's close, closed weeks stay put, and the 13-week forecast rolls forward with actuals replacing forecast as they land.
That work is the center of CFOptimize – accelerate your growth. The deliverable is a lender-ready package – a 13-week cash flow, a borrowing base and projections – built on numbers your banker can underwrite and your team can run every month. If your P&L and your bank balance are telling two different stories, book a time with me, or browse the other demos in our showcase, including the packaging decision tool that runs Wrenfield's printed-can order against sleeves.
Mark.
Wrenfield Sparkling Co. is a fictional company, and every figure in the dashboard and in this post is invented for illustration. Nothing here is drawn from any client's books. Multiples, rates and the tariff input are illustrative and are not market quotes or forecasts.