If you lead a consumer packaged goods company, your scoreboard cannot be a once a month PDF. Retail moves too quickly for that. Promotions shift, deductions land without warning, a freight lane changes, a buyer pulls a display, and suddenly your month looks very different than the plan you shared with investors two weeks ago. A weekly view disciplines the business. It gives you twelve or thirteen small course corrections every quarter instead of three. Done well, it turns metrics into momentum, because you learn faster, fix issues earlier, and compound small wins into durable growth.
This guide lays out the metrics that matter most on a weekly cadence, why they belong on one page, and how to connect the numbers to decisions your team will actually take. It focuses on four layers that build on one another, unit economics per SKU and account, gross to net and trade performance, cash and working capital, and retail execution. Together they show whether each case you sell strengthens the business or quietly erodes it.
Why weekly, and why these metrics
A weekly rhythm is about early detection. In CPG, your margin is a collection of tiny decisions made far from your desk. A label that prints with the wrong barcode, a case that misses an appointment and triggers a fee, a display that never goes up, a promotion that lifts units but collapses average selling price. If you wait for month end, the damage is done. Weekly metrics surface the pattern early enough to act. They also build team habits. When everyone knows that Tuesday brings the same one page readout, conversations shift from opinions to observations and actions.
Not every number belongs on a weekly scoreboard. Pick the few that move when reality changes and that tie directly to actions your team can take in the next seven days. The point is not to admire a dashboard. The point is to decide and do.
The unit economics core
Everything begins with your profit stack. For each top SKU in your top accounts, compute list price, net price after trade, gross margin, and contribution margin. Net price after trade is the price you realize after discounts, promos, distributor margins, and timely pay terms. Contribution margin is gross margin minus variable outbound costs, freight, pick and pack, case and pallet fees, and merchant fees where relevant. This single chain tells you whether selling an incremental case adds fuel or drains cash.
Track it weekly because small shifts matter. If contribution percentage compresses two points in one account, look for the culprit immediately. Did a deeper discount run without your approval. Did freight add a surcharge. Did minimum order quantities force partial pallets. Fixing the issue in week one is cheaper than discovering it in week five.
There is a second reason to keep unit economics central. It anchors every conversation about pricing, pack counts, and promotion depth. A founder who knows exactly how net price moves when trade is added or removed, and how contribution reacts to a lane cost increase, will make faster, calmer decisions. If you want a simple way to structure that math and reuse it by account, keep a clean worksheet you can duplicate for new customers or regions. The companies that last treat this as muscle, not a quarterly project.
Gross to net and trade integrity
Trade spend is necessary, but it must earn its keep. On a weekly basis, compare accrued trade to realized deductions and keep a running variance. If realized deductions jump, read the backup and sort them into clean buckets. Compliance fees and appointment fines live in one bucket, which means a routing or paperwork issue. Unauthorized billbacks live in another bucket, which means governance and distributor communication. True allowances live in a third bucket, which means planned promotions that you can map to sell through.
Now pair those dollars with what happened in stores. For any promotion that started in the last two weeks, track promo lift during the deal period and the baseline in the four weeks after it ends. The pattern you want is a meaningful lift with a shallow post promo dip and a slightly higher baseline than before the event. The pattern you need to stop is a big lift followed by a deep dip and a flat or falling baseline, which means you are teaching your shopper to wait for the sale. The goal is not to eliminate discounting. The goal is to prevent discounting that trains the wrong behavior.
A practical anchor for this layer is the evolving list of KPIs that finance and operations teams in consumer goods rely on, from contribution margin quality to promotion effectiveness and forecast accuracy. A concise overview of common CPG KPIs and why operators track them is available here, and it is useful background as you choose your own short list, see CPG KPIs and metrics explained.
Cash, inventory, and the working capital pulse
Growth consumes cash first, then pays you back later. That means you need a short list of working capital metrics that you review every week. Track days sales outstanding, days payable outstanding, and inventory days on hand. Together, they form your cash conversion cycle. When DSO stretches, runway shrinks. When inventory days swell, cash hides in the warehouse while you pay carrying costs and take spoilage risk. When DPO shortens unexpectedly, you may be paying suppliers faster than your plan assumed.
Bring near dated inventory into the same view. Short code product is a time bomb, especially in refrigerated or frozen categories. When you see it building at a distributor DC or in your own warehouse, design a specific action to move it immediately. A targeted display with a measured price move for a single week can clear risk without training the entire shopper base to expect a markdown. Waiting will turn a manageable situation into a write down.
The cash layer should always connect back to your unit economics. If contribution margin is healthy and cash is still tight, look for inventory growth, deduction delays, or a payables shift. If contribution is thin and cash is tight, you need to address price, pack, or lane costs now, not after the quarter closes. Weekly rhythm is about catching the trend when a gentle nudge will fix it, not when a rescue is required.
Retail execution, where the shopper votes
Retailers buy turn, not talk, so your weekly scoreboard needs the simple retail truths. Track velocity per store per week for your top SKUs in your top accounts, weighted distribution for those items, and a repeat purchase indicator. Velocity tells you how fast you sell where you are. Weighted distribution tells you how many relevant doors you are in and how meaningful those doors are to the category. Repeat tells you whether your product is earning loyalty rather than relying on constant trial.
Add two execution checks that predict whether velocity will hold. First, on time in full across your outbound shipments. If OTIF slips, buyers will notice before your report does. Second, display compliance on weeks where you are funding a feature or an end cap. A display that never goes up turns promotion math into fantasy. You do not need a complex system to monitor this. Time stamped photos from field visits, matched to POS in the promotion period, will tell you most of what you need to know.
Finally, include deduction rate, measured as deductions per dollar of sales, and sort the top two codes by retailer. When deduction rate rises, do not guess. Read the documentation. In many cases a recurring error in labeling, ASN data, or appointment booking is the root cause. Fix that and you stop bleeding a thousand tiny cuts.
A weekly narrative, not a wall of numbers
Numbers do not move people, narratives do. Use your weekly report to tell a brief story about what changed and what you will do. Open with a short paragraph on the big signal, for example, contribution margin stabilized at 32 percent after last week’s freight renegotiation, but realized deductions rose two points at Retailer A due to appointment fines. Follow with the three or four metrics that support the story and the two actions you will take before the next meeting. Keep it tight. The discipline of a short narrative keeps everyone focused on cause, effect, and action rather than commentary.
This is also how you align the team. Sales sees display compliance and velocity. Operations sees OTIF and deduction codes. Finance sees contribution and cash. The founder sees all of it in one place with a clear next step, which reduces decision fatigue and keeps meetings short and useful.
Setting targets that drive behavior
Targets should be ambitious enough to guide choices, and realistic enough that people believe them. For contribution margin, set a floor by account and by pack size. Below that floor, you do not approve promotions, displays, or new lanes. For velocity, set a target by store tier and revisit it quarterly, because seasonality and assortment changes will move the goalposts. For deduction rate, set a ceiling and treat breaches as operational defects to be rooted out quickly. For DSO, set a ceiling that protects runway, and for inventory days, set a ceiling that protects cash and freshness.
Reinforce these targets with simple rules. A promotion that will drop contribution below the floor requires a compensating action, for example, display support or a pack change that restores margin. A new region that adds outbound cost must be paired with a price or pack plan that maintains contribution. A deduction spike over the ceiling triggers a quick corrective project with an owner and a due date. When rules are clear, decisions get faster.
Instrumentation without overkill
You do not need a complex tool stack to report weekly with confidence. A spreadsheet that pulls POS for your top accounts, a simple gross to net model per SKU and account, a working capital tab with DSO, DPO, and inventory days, and a short form to capture field photos and display dates will do the job. Add automation only when the volume of data makes manual work error prone or slow. The principle is the same as good packaging design. Clarity first, polish later.
If you want context for how professional buyers and operators evaluate the health and value of a CPG business, it can be useful to skim practitioner notes that outline the metrics acquirers and advisors inspect. A founder friendly piece that walks through how CPG businesses are assessed for value, and which numbers drive outcomes, is here, see How to value your CPG business for sale. While you may be far from an exit, the lens helps you pick weekly metrics that compound into enterprise value, not just short term revenue.
A simple case example
Consider a refrigerated beverage brand that launched regionally. In week one of their new cadence, the team noticed contribution margin in a key account had fallen from 35 percent to 30 percent. The weekly report pinned the drop on a freight surcharge that hit two lanes and on a deeper temporary price reduction that ran longer than planned. OTIF had slipped the same week, which triggered two appointment fines that raised realized deductions. None of this was obvious at month end, because total cases sold looked great.
The team took three actions in the next seven days. They moved the heaviest pack to a slightly different pallet pattern that removed one accessorial fee, they replaced the deep discount with a limited flavor feature that preserved average selling price, and they re trained the warehouse on the retailer’s appointment system to eliminate the fines. By week three, contribution margin recovered two points, deduction rate returned to normal, and velocity held because the display was executed correctly. Nothing heroic, just small, fast fixes made possible by a weekly view.
What the meeting looks like
The best weekly reviews are short. Everyone reads the one pager in advance. The founder opens with a two minute narrative. Finance presents contribution and cash in two minutes. Sales covers velocity, distribution, and display compliance in three minutes. Operations walks through OTIF and top deduction codes in three minutes. The last five minutes are for decisions and owners. The recap email has two actions, two owners, and one expected outcome for next week. If you hit that rhythm consistently, you will be surprised how many small problems never become big ones.
If you want a deeper look at how we install that kind of operating rhythm, our approach is outlined on About Come Sell or High Water, and if you want help adapting this weekly blueprint to your exact category and stage, you can reach out through Contact. The system is simple by design, because simple systems get used.
The short list to start this week
Begin with a single page. Include contribution margin by top SKU and account, net price after trade and a note on any change, DSO, DPO, inventory days and near dated inventory, velocity per store per week and weighted distribution, an indicator for repeat, OTIF and deduction rate with the top two codes by retailer, and a one paragraph narrative with two actions and owners. That is all. You can layer in sophistication later, cohort analysis on promotion response, forecast error by item, or GMROI by channel, but do not lose the plot. The value is in the habit, not the software.
The weekly practice turns numbers into a dialogue with your business. It keeps you close to reality, it speeds learning, and it gives your buyers and investors confidence that you are running the company with clarity. Most importantly, it builds a culture that moves quickly on facts. In a category where shopper preferences and retailer priorities shift constantly, that culture is a durable advantage.