How to Use This Tool
Compare customer deposits with production and other upfront launch costs. A sold-out preorder can still fail when deposits arrive before production but cover only part of supplier and launch obligations.
Why Preorder Funding Gap needs more than a raw total
Use cash actually available after processor holds and taxes, not the checkout value shown to customers. For this page, the useful comparison is additional cash required, not whichever input happens to be largest. The Preorder Funding Gap result answers the decision in the heading and should not be reused as a score for a different workflow.
The exact Preorder Funding Gap formula
Funding gap equals units × production cost + other upfront costs minus units × collected cash, floored at zero. The visible fields are Committed preorder units, Cash collected per preorder, Production cost per unit and Other upfront costs. For Preorder Funding Gap, read each printed unit before entry and make the values describe one transaction, cohort or reporting window. If those scopes differ, the displayed additional cash required may be arithmetically valid but operationally meaningless.
Interpreting additional cash required
Secure the gap plus contingency before placing a non-cancellable production order or promising a ship date. The ten-percent comparison is deliberately narrow: it tests the influence of committed preorder units and is neither a forecast nor a confidence interval. Preserve the values used, their dates and the resulting decision so a later reviewer can reproduce why Preorder Funding Gap supported the choice.
What this Preorder Funding Gap model leaves out
Payment timing, refunds, processor reserves, tax, freight, defects and supplier milestones are excluded. That is where Preorder Funding Gap stops being trustworthy. If an excluded factor could reverse additional cash required, extend the model explicitly or use the authoritative account system instead of hiding the factor inside an unexplained adjustment.
Evidence and independent verification
The reference reviewed for Preorder Funding Gap is FTC — Mail, Internet, or Telephone Order Rule. FTC — Mail, Internet, or Telephone Order Rule supports the named definition or rule but does not supply private values for additional cash required. Before acting on the result, reconcile the worked example with the relevant dashboard, invoice, export or measurement.
Private, reproducible calculation
Preorder Funding Gap runs its arithmetic in the current browser tab and requests no login or API key. That keeps the Preorder Funding Gap inputs away from the site's calculation server, while leaving the user responsible for detecting stale data or a changed platform rule. When an assumption changes, reopen FTC — Mail, Internet, or Telephone Order Rule and rerun the saved Preorder Funding Gap scenario.
Sources & assumptions
Tool Spec v2 · verified 2026-08-22. Platform rules and fees can change; the editable inputs remain authoritative for your account.
Official references
- FTC — Mail, Internet, or Telephone Order Rule (checked 2026-08-22)
Model assumptions
- Every input covers the same reporting period or cohort.
- Payment timing, refunds, processor reserves, tax, freight, defects and supplier milestones are excluded.
- The calculator uses only the visible fields and does not fetch account data.
