What does an accepted case cost?
Connect acquisition spend with your firm’s acceptance decisions. Use this acquisition economics calculator to include intake expense, test acceptance scenarios, and size the next cohort.
Your cohort & target
Use one consistent delivery period and review cutoff. All amounts are in US dollars.
Net attributable supplier or media cost for this cohort. Apply only confirmed credits.
Unique units from the same cohort. Keep leads, transfers and signed-case deliveries in separate comparisons.
The share of delivered units your firm accepts after review, from 0% to 100%.
Additional expense for this cohort. Exclude anything already counted in acquisition spend.
The total accepted volume to plan for in a new cohort, not additional cases beyond this one.
Your entries stay in this page. They are not added to analytics events, saved, or sent with the inquiry link.
The economics
Acquisition plus intake/review expense, divided by expected accepted cases.
- Expected accepted cases
- 24
- Total cohort cost
- $24,000.00
- Acquisition cost per delivered unit
- $500.00
- Intake/review cost per delivered unit
- $100.00
Expected counts can be fractional. Actual accepted cases are whole matters recorded by your firm; this scenario does not report actual decisions.
Plan for 30 accepted cases
- Expected accepted at that volume
- 30
- Acquisition budget
- $25,000.00
- Intake/review budget
- $5,000.00
- Total target budget
- $30,000.00
For a new cohort at the same acceptance rate and per-delivery costs. Whole-unit rounding may put expected acceptance above your target.
What changes with acceptance?
Hold your spend, delivered volume and unit costs steady. These scenarios vary acceptance by up to 20 percentage points in either direction, bounded to 0–100%.
| Firm acceptance | Expected accepted | Cost / expected accepted | Delivered units for target | Target budget |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 40% | 16 | $1,500.00 | 75 | $45,000.00 |
| 50% | 20 | $1,200.00 | 60 | $36,000.00 |
| 60%Current | 24 | $1,000.00 | 50 | $30,000.00 |
| 70% | 28 | $857.14 | 43 | $25,800.00 |
| 80% | 32 | $750.00 | 38 | $22,800.00 |
Unavailable means the scenario has zero acceptance, lacks delivered units for a cost basis, or exceeds the supported budget range. At a zero target, required volume and budget are zero.
One cohort. Consistent costs. A clear denominator.
An accepted case is a matter your firm has approved after its own review. A supplier delivery, answered call or signed agreement is a different stage. Use your firm’s definition consistently.
This is an expected-value planning worksheet. It uses your percentage assumption; it does not read actual firm decisions or establish a likely outcome.
- Expected accepted casesDelivered units × (firm acceptance percentage ÷ 100). Expected counts can be fractional; actual accepted matters cannot.
- Total cohort costAcquisition spend + additional intake and review expense. Include only costs attributed to the same cohort and subtract confirmed credits once.
- Cost per expected accepted caseTotal cohort cost ÷ expected accepted cases. With zero expected acceptances, this ratio is unavailable, even when spend is zero.
- Delivered volume for your targetAccepted-case target ÷ (acceptance percentage ÷ 100), rounded up to a whole delivered unit. A positive target cannot be reached at 0% acceptance in this model.
- Budget for the next cohortCurrent acquisition spend ÷ current delivered units × required delivered units. Repeat for intake/review expense, round each component up to the nearest cent, then add them. The calculation retains full unit-cost precision before rounding.
What the projection assumes
Acceptance and cost per delivered unit remain constant. Both acquisition and intake expense scale with volume. Fixed setup costs, discounts, step changes in staffing and a limited review capacity can make actual costs differ. Enter only the costs that fit this assumption when using the target budget.
The target is the total for a new cohort, not the remaining gap after your current cohort. A zero target requires zero volume and budget. With no current deliveries, a positive target budget has no unit-cost basis.
Keep pending reviews visible
Use unique deliveries from one period and a common review cutoff. A recent cohort with pending decisions can have a lower observed acceptance percentage without a change in quality. Compare cohorts at similar ages and keep the pending count in your firm’s records.
These calculations stop at acquisition and firm acceptance. They do not estimate settlements, legal fees, profitability or a guaranteed result. For a reconciled historical report, use actual accepted counts and the cost-per-accepted-case measurement guide.
Define the acquisition brief your team can review.
Discuss the delivery stage, qualification criteria, intake responsibilities and reporting your firm needs. Your calculator entries are not attached to the inquiry.