One workspace for everything after the campaign funds — so you know what you actually earned, what to manufacture, and what it costs to ship. Without the spreadsheet panic.
Ad spend front-loads into the first two weeks and is usually your single biggest cost — often bigger than manufacturing. The pledge bar only goes up, so it can't tell you whether you're profitable.
Spend hard to prove it. Then ease off to keep it.
The first days, aggressive ads buy something priceless: proof the product really sells. Once that's proven, every extra ad euro buys pledges at a thinning margin — and the rising bar keeps your foot on the pedal. The moment to pull back shows up in net revenue and true ROAS, never in the total raised. BackerControl shows it live, while you can still act.
See the money module →The launch, the build, and the ship. Most teams plan obsessively for the first one and improvise the other two — until the surprises arrive and the data is scattered across spreadsheets and someone's inbox.
Ads, pledges, the funding bar climbing. This part everyone obsesses over — and tools exist for it.
Pledges become SKUs, suppliers, batches and costs. The translation layer nobody warns you about.
Right thing, right backer, every country priced differently, customs eating the margin that's left.
From day one, plug in ad spend by channel and partner and log fees and commissions as they hit. BackerControl shows live net revenue and true ROAS — so you know whether you're actually making money while you can still change it, not three months later. And it tracks every referrer that drove a pledge — not just the partners you paid, but the magazine feature, the blog write-up, the community post — so you see what's really moving your campaign.
A backer didn't pledge "5 things." They pledged a Limited tier, an add-on and a stretch goal — three SKUs, three suppliers, three timelines. BackerControl turns reward tiers into a clean manufacturing demand plan, with costs and dates that hold up.
A 5-pack of refills is one SKU at the warehouse even though it's five at the factory. Couriers price every country differently. BackerControl tells you exactly what to send, what it'll cost per country, and which backers can ship right now.
Most of your pledges come through marketing partners and affiliates — each on its own commission and ad-spend deal. BackerControl breaks pledges and cost down per partner, so you can see real ROAS partner-by-partner and cut the ones quietly losing money.
The averages hide it: blended ROAS looks fine, but Partner C returned €0,49 for every €1 spent while affiliates returned €2,09. Per-partner truth is what lets you reallocate budget mid-campaign instead of finding out in the post-mortem.
The generic tools were made by people who never had to ship 8,000 boxes. These are the details that break a spreadsheet — and the reason this one doesn't.
One backer, one pledge — but a tier plus an add-on plus a stretch goal is three SKUs from three suppliers, each on its own timeline. Multiply by 8,000.
Your factory ships components. Your fulfiller picks products. A 5-pack is one SKU at the warehouse and five at the factory — and the maths has to agree.
Couriers price every country differently and customs eats whatever's left. See which markets are economic to serve before you commit, not after.
Ad spend alone was €59,200 — bigger than manufacturing. True ROAS landed at 1.14×: barely above water. The pledge total never told that story. BackerControl did, in real time — from the first week.
Collects addresses and money. It won't tell you your true margin, what to manufacture, or which countries lose money to ship to.
The financial & operational brain between them: real net revenue, a manufacturing plan, and per-country shipping economics — in one place.
Fine at 50 backers. It breaks at 8,000 — exactly when the tier→SKU explosion, multi-currency and customs make the stakes highest.
See your real numbers for nothing. Upgrade when the build and the ship begin.
Create your workspace and import your backer report — you'll see your real number in minutes.