Revenue-Based Funding Tracker

Revenue-Based Funding Tracker

Plan availability: Revenue-based funding tracking is included on the Plus tier. Starter and Pro workspaces will see a tier-upgrade prompt when opening this page.

Revenue-based funding (RBF) tracking in MerchantFlow is the process of monitoring cash advances and financing agreements from providers like Shopify Capital, Clearco, and Wayflyer, so you can see exactly what those repayments are costing you. Track original amounts, repayment progress, projected payoff dates, and the share of daily revenue each lender is taking.

What Is Revenue-Based Funding?

Revenue-based funding is a financing model where a provider advances cash to your e-commerce business and collects repayment as a fixed percentage of your daily revenue. Unlike traditional loans, RBF has no fixed monthly payment. Instead, repayment speed scales with your sales volume.

Common RBF providers:

• Shopify Capital - Available directly through Shopify admin
• Clearco - Revenue-based financing for e-commerce
• Wayflyer - Growth funding for online brands
• Payability - Marketplace seller advances
• Custom agreements from other providers

Key RBF terms:

• Amount received - The cash deposited into your account
• Fixed fee - The total cost of the advance (expressed as a percentage or flat fee)
• Total repayment - Amount received plus the fixed fee
• Repayment percentage - The share of daily revenue withheld for repayment

MerchantFlow does not provide capital or lending. The External Funding Tracker is a record-keeping and forecasting tool for agreements you already hold with third-party lenders.

How Revenue-Based Funding Tracking Works

MerchantFlow calculates your funding position automatically by combining your agreement terms with your actual revenue data:

1. You enter your funding agreement details
2. MerchantFlow applies your real daily revenue to estimate repayment progress
3. You log the remittances your lender actually took - once you have logged any, they replace the estimate
4. The dashboard shows remaining balance, daily repayment estimates, and projected payoff dates
5. Daily repayment is recorded on your P&L as a cash-flow line

How to Access the Funding Dashboard

Navigate to Profit > External Funding (/dashboard/funding) from the main navigation. The page is headed External Funding Tracker. There is also a Funding card on the P&L page that links to it.

How to Add a Funding Agreement

1. Click Add Agreement
2. Fill in the details:
   • Provider Name - e.g. Shopify Capital, Clearco, Wayflyer, or your own label
   • Amount Received - cash received (principal)
   • Fixed Fee % - fee charged by the provider, informational
   • Total Repayment Amount (required) - principal plus fee
   • Daily Revenue Rate % (required) - the share of daily gross revenue withheld. Must be greater than 0 and no more than 100
   • Currency - the currency your agreement is written in. Defaults to your workspace currency
   • Monthly remittance cap (optional) - the most your lender may take in a calendar month
   • Funded on (optional) - when the cash actually landed. Informational
   • Repayments start on (required) - the first day your lender takes a share of revenue. If your lender gave you a holiday period, enter the date remittances actually begin, not the day you received the money
   • End Date (optional) - the agreement timeline
   • Notes - optional notes
3. Click Create

Each agreement can be edited, Paused and Resumed, or deleted. A paused agreement stops accruing repayment.

How Repayment Is Calculated

For each day inside the agreement window:

Daily repayment = Gross revenue for the day x (Daily Revenue Rate % / 100)

capped so the running total never exceeds your Total Repayment Amount. Once the total is reached the agreement stops deducting and shows as Fully Repaid.

Monthly remittance cap

If your contract caps how much the lender may take in a month, enter it as the monthly remittance cap. Once a calendar month reaches the cap, nothing further is remitted until the first of the next month, in your workspace timezone.

There is no carry-over: a cap makes the agreement take longer to repay, it does not push a shortfall into the following month.

What that month costs you depends on how your agreement is written: a fixed-fee advance costs proportionally less in a capped month, while an interest-rate agreement keeps accruing on the outstanding balance regardless.

The projected payoff date accounts for the cap. Without that, a merchant whose revenue share would be far above their cap would be shown a payoff date many months too early.

Projections

The projection uses a trailing 30-day average of your daily gross revenue:

Projected monthly repayment = min(monthly cap, 30-day avg daily revenue x rate % x 30.4375)

The 30.4375 is an average calendar month, not the length of any particular month -- this is a projection, not a day-accurate schedule. Uncapped agreements skip the monthly step entirely and project straight from the daily share.

As your revenue changes, the projected payoff date moves with it.

What the Funding Dashboard Shows

Four KPI tiles summarise all your agreements:

• Repaid to date - what you have repaid across every agreement. Each agreement is marked Actual when it is based on remittances you have logged, or Estimated when it is only the revenue-share projection
• Remaining Balance - outstanding balance
• Est. Daily Repayment - projected from your trailing 30-day revenue
• Projected Payoff - when the balance is expected to reach zero (shows N/A when it cannot be projected)

Each agreement row then shows Remaining, Margin Impact (your daily revenue rate, shown as a negative percentage), Est. Payoff, a progress bar of repaid-versus-total, and a status pill: Active, Paused, or Fully Repaid. Agreements with a monthly cap also show how much has been remitted against it this month.

Amounts on an agreement are shown in that agreement's own currency. The four KPI tiles at the top are in your workspace currency; an agreement we cannot convert is excluded from those totals and called out rather than silently dropped.

Estimated versus actual

Until you log a repayment, "repaid to date" is a projection of what your revenue share would have come to - not a record of money leaving your account. It is labelled Estimated wherever it appears.

Open Repayments on an agreement and add the remittances your lender has actually taken. As soon as one exists, the figure switches to Actual and the projection moves to the background.

How Funding Affects Your P&L

Repayment is recorded per day as a Funding Repayment figure, visible on the P&L, in the P&L CSV export, and as an optional North Star metric.

An important distinction: a funding repayment is a cash-flow item, not an operating expense. The full repayment does not reduce net profit -- only your lender's cost does, appearing on the profit waterfall as Financing Cost:

EBITDA     = Contribution Margin - OPEX - Amortised CapEx - Variable Costs
Net Profit = EBITDA - Financing Cost - Sales Tax (only when treated as a cost)

This keeps your P&L comparable with standard accounting treatment: the principal you repay was never revenue, so subtracting it from profit would double-count. Use the funding dashboard for cash position and the P&L for profitability.

How the financing cost is calculated

Most revenue-based advances are quoted as a fixed fee rather than an interest rate. Your fee is the difference between the total you repay and the amount you received -- so a $100,000 advance repaying $110,000 carries a $10,000 fee.

That fee is recognised in step with your remittances: on a day you remit 2% of the total you owe, 2% of the fee is charged to your P&L. Over the life of the agreement the amounts recognised add up to exactly the fee, and a month that hits your remittance cap costs proportionally less because less was remitted.

If your agreement is quoted as an annual interest rate instead, interest accrues daily on the outstanding principal, and a capped month still accrues in full -- that is why a cap lengthens the term rather than reducing what the funding costs.

Both appear on the same Financing Cost line.

Where you will see it

• P&L waterfall -- a Financing Cost row between EBITDA and Net Profit
• Dashboard profit breakdown -- a Financing Fee slice alongside your other costs
• Funding Repayment (cash flow) -- shown on both, marked as informational, because it is not deducted from profit

Only agreements that are actually costing you money show these rows.

Best Practices for Funding Management

• Add all active funding agreements for accurate cash-flow tracking
• Update agreements if terms change or you receive additional funding
• Monitor the External Funding view regularly to track repayment progress
• Compare the total funding cost versus the revenue growth the funding enabled
• Use the Product Viability Calculator to ensure new products funded by advances will be profitable after repayment costs
• Check your burn rate to understand how funding repayments affect cash runway

Frequently Asked Questions

How does MerchantFlow calculate the projected payoff date?

MerchantFlow uses your recent daily revenue and the repayment percentage from your agreement to estimate how much you repay each day. It then projects forward to determine when the total remaining balance will reach zero. As your revenue changes, the projected date updates automatically.

Can I track multiple funding agreements at the same time?

Yes. You can add as many funding agreements as you have active. The dashboard aggregates all agreements to show your total outstanding balance, combined daily repayment estimate, and individual agreement details.

Does funding tracking work with non-RBF loans?

The funding tracker is designed for revenue-based funding with percentage-of-revenue repayment. For traditional fixed-payment loans, you can record the monthly payment as a recurring expense instead.

How do I know if my funding is costing too much?

Compare the fixed fee percentage to the revenue growth the funding enabled. If the fee is 10% but the funding helped you grow revenue by 50%, the cost was worthwhile. The Margin Impact figure on each agreement row shows what share of daily revenue is going to that lender.

Why doesn't my net profit drop by the full repayment amount?

Because a repayment is not an expense. Repaying principal returns cash you already received; only the financing cost is a P&L item, and it appears as Financing Cost on the profit waterfall. The full daily repayment is still recorded and shown separately so you can see the cash leaving the business.

My net profit went down after this changed. Why?

Earlier versions only charged a financing cost when an agreement was quoted as an annual interest rate. Fixed-fee advances -- which is how Shopify Capital, Clearco and Wayflyer normally write them -- were not charged anything, so their fee never appeared in your P&L at all. Your net profit was overstated by that fee.

Historical figures have been recalculated, so past periods will show a lower net profit than before. The repayment totals and your revenue have not changed.

Should I also log repayments as an expense?

No. Repayments and their fee are derived automatically from your agreement terms and your daily revenue. Adding them again under the Funding Repayment expense category would count them twice: once automatically and once as an operating expense. The expense form warns you if you pick that category.

Related Topics

• P&L Overview - Complete financial tracking
• Expense Tracking - Track all business costs
• Bank Balance - Cash position monitoring
• Product Viability Calculator - Assess product profitability

Last updated: August 30, 2026