A route-pricing spreadsheet can total commission, processor fees, and mileage correctly if every cell is filled in. What it doesn't do on its own is charge the vault cash sitting in the machine a cost of capital -- because that cost never arrives as a bill the way a processor fee does, so nothing on a typical cost list prompts anyone to add it. On a location running a real cash balance, that omission is the difference between a route that looks healthy and one that barely clears.
| A per-location pricing spreadsheet | This calculator | |
|---|---|---|
| Commission split / flat fee | A cell most operators already track | Charged against gross surcharge the same way |
| Processor fee, mileage, labor | Usually tracked once someone thinks to add the columns | Itemized fields for each, held apart from the commission split |
| Vault cash cost of capital | Not on the sheet unless someone deliberately adds an opportunity-cost line -- it is never a bill you receive | A required field: an annual cost-of-capital rate applied to the average cash balance, every time |
| Route income-gap projection | A manual SUM and a manual formula someone has to write | Rolls the list into total and average profit, then divides the gap to a target income by the average automatically |
Take a location doing the calculator's default 220 withdrawals a month at a $2.75 surcharge, a 40% commission split, and a $0.30 processor fee -- but running a larger cash balance, $8,000, serviced at an 18% annual cost-of-capital rate. A spreadsheet that lists commission, processor fees, mileage, and labor but never adds a line for the cash itself reports:
| Gross surcharge revenue | $605.00 |
|---|---|
| Commission, processing, mileage, labor, machine cost | $461.47 |
| Net profit (no vault cash cost line) | $143.53 |
| Margin (no vault cash cost line) | 23.72% |
That reads as a healthy location. Add the one line most cash-in/cash-out sheets never get around to -- $8,000 of vault cash at 18% annually costs $120.00 a month, whether that cash is your own or a servicing provider's -- and the same location comes out very differently:
| Vault cash cost of capital | $120.00 |
|---|---|
| Net profit (vault cash cost counted) | $23.53 |
| Margin (vault cash cost counted) | 3.89% |
Nothing about the location changed between those two readings. The $120 was always there, drawing down a return it could have earned elsewhere -- a spreadsheet just never asked. This calculator asks every time, because the cash-cost field has no default of zero worth trusting.
Say a four-location route nets $185, $60, -$10, and $40 a month once each location's own numbers are worked out -- a spreadsheet's SUM gets the $275 total right, and AVERAGE gets $68.75 right. Neither function, on its own, answers the next question an operator actually has: against a $1,200 monthly income goal, that's a $925 gap, and closing it at the same $68.75 average takes 14 more locations. That's a formula someone has to write on purpose, and a single losing placement (-$10 here) pulls the average -- and so the projection -- down in a way that is easy to miss glancing down a column, but that this calculator's route roll-up computes on every change to the list.
Open the ATM Route Margin Calculator to price your own route, or read is this ATM placement worth it? for a worked example on a single new offer. Shopping for a new processor instead? See this calculator vs. ATM Depot's Profit Calculator.
Filled in carefully, a spreadsheet can total a location's commission split, processor fees, mileage, and labor time correctly. What it doesn't do on its own is charge the vault cash sitting in the machine a cost of capital -- because that cost never arrives as an invoice the way a processor fee or a mileage receipt does, nothing on a typical cash-in/cash-out cost list prompts anyone to add a line for it unless they already know to.
Because it is money that could be earning a return somewhere else, or that a cash-servicing provider would charge to hold. An annual cost-of-capital rate applied to the average cash balance turns that opportunity cost into a monthly dollar figure next to the surcharge revenue it makes possible -- and on a location running a large cash balance, that figure can be the difference between a route that looks healthy and one that is barely breaking even.
A spreadsheet can sum a column of monthly profit figures and average them without much trouble. What it usually doesn't do automatically is divide the gap between that total and a monthly income goal by the average profit per location, to say how many more placements at the same average would close it -- and a route carrying even one underperforming or losing location pulls that average down in a way that is easy to miss just eyeballing a list, but that changes the answer directly.
No. Every field runs in your browser and nothing survives closing the tab except the visit-cost inputs and income goal, which are saved locally on this device so you don't retype them. Usage counting only tallies anonymous feature events, and you can turn it off from the calculator page.