The guarantee is the whole deal on a quiet stop
Twelve percent of $640 is $76.80, and a $75 minimum guarantee sits just under it, so at the volume in the form the percentage is what you pay and the guarantee looks like a formality. Drop the stop to $500 a month and the percentage is $60 while the guarantee is still $75, which is fifteen percent of gross. At $300 it is twenty-five percent. The knee is at $625: below it the location is paid the same money whatever happens, and every dollar of decline comes out of you alone.
That is not a hidden term, it is written plainly in the agreement, and it still surprises operators because the number people remember from the signing is the percentage. The useful discipline is to work out the knee once, write it on the account, and know which side of it every stop is on.
Three bases, one percentage
At the default numbers, twelve percent applied to gross is $76.80 a month. Applied to gross less the cost of goods it is $44.54. Over four years that gap is $1,548 on one machine, from a difference in wording that takes nine words to write either way. If a route has thirty stops and half of them were signed on gross because nobody read closely, the arithmetic is worth more than most of the operational changes anybody argues about.
Visits are the cost nobody puts on the stop
The stop in the form takes 2.2 visits a month at $14.50, which is $31.90, plus $12 of monthly charges. That is $43.90 leaving before a single commission dollar, 6.9 percent of a $640 gross, and it does not move when the gross falls — a stop doing $250 still takes its visits. The page puts the break-even at $205 a month for the running costs and $288 once the machine is being paid for as well, and at $160 a month the same stop loses $26.10 every month and never returns the placement at all. This is why a thin stop goes negative so fast: the two largest costs after goods are both fixed, and one of them is a guarantee.
The honest complication is that the visit cost is rarely as clean as one number. If four machines sit in the same building, the drive is shared and the marginal cost of the fifth minute at the fourth machine is small. If the stop is nine miles off the run, it is not. Put in the cost this stop actually causes rather than the route average, because the route average is what makes bad stops look survivable.
The two inputs this page leans on hardest are worked out elsewhere. How many visits a stop really forces comes out of the par level and restock interval calculator, because the interval is set by whichever column empties first. The cost of goods share comes out of the delivered cost per vend calculator, which includes the trip and the prekit that a case price leaves out.
Payback, and what it leaves out
At the defaults the stop leaves $250.50 a month and the $3,200 placement comes back in 12.8 months, comfortably inside the four years the form assumes. That number is sensitive in exactly one direction that matters: it assumes the location keeps the machine. A stop that hands it back at month ten has cost you the placement, the pull, and whatever the machine is worth less than you paid. No calculator can price that risk, but it is the reason a shorter expected hold should move the gross you insist on before agreeing to place, not the commission you offer.
Everything here is arithmetic on numbers you supply. It does not know what a normal commission is, it has not read your agreement, and it says nothing about how sales tax works. Those belong to your own contract, your accountant and your state revenue office.
Questions people ask
How does a minimum guarantee change a vending commission?
It converts a percentage into a floor, and below a certain gross the floor is what you actually pay. Divide the guarantee by the percentage times whatever base the agreement names and you get the knee. A $75 guarantee against twelve percent of gross has its knee at $625 a month; below that the effective rate climbs as the stop slows, reaching twenty-five percent at $300. The percentage in the contract stops describing the deal at that point.
Should commission be paid on gross or on net?
That is a negotiation, not a fact, and this page will not tell you what is normal. What it will do is show the three common bases side by side at your own numbers. Twelve percent of $640 is $76.80 on gross and $44.54 once tax and cost of goods come out first, so the wording is worth as much as the rate. Whatever you agree, make sure the paperwork names the base explicitly.
How do I know if a vending location is worth keeping?
Compare its gross against two lines. The first is the gross that covers the visits and the monthly charges, which is the point below which the stop loses money every month it stays open. The second adds the machine spread over the months you expect to hold it, which is the point below which it never pays for having been placed. A stop can sit between the two for years and look fine on a collection sheet while never returning the capital.
What should I count as the cost of a service visit?
The cost this stop causes, not the route average. If it shares a building with three other machines, the drive is already paid and only the minutes are marginal. If it is nine miles off the run, the whole leg belongs to it. Using the route average is the standard way a genuinely unprofitable outlying stop stays on the schedule, because averaging spreads its cost across the stops that are doing fine.