The one with the biggest cheque up front, or the one with better margin and support every week? They're rarely the same. This free spreadsheet compares two offers properly — over the whole tie-in — and shows you which is genuinely worth more, and exactly when a big upfront incentive gets overtaken.
A £20,000 cheque to switch is easy to say yes to. But if that group's margin is a point lower, it can cost you more than that over a five-year tie-in.
Symbol group offers are deliberately hard to compare. One leads with a big upfront incentive. Another leads with better margin. A third bundles in marketing support, cheaper deliveries, or a rebate that only kicks in above a certain spend. Each highlights the number that flatters it, and the pound signs pull your eye to the upfront.
The only fair way to judge them is to convert everything — incentives, margin, costs, rebates, support — into a single figure: what each deal is truly worth per month, and across the full agreement. That's what this tool does.
You enter two offers side by side. For each, the tool folds in every lever a symbol group can pull:
The gross margin each group gives you, plus any realistic sales uplift from a stronger range — turned into weekly gross profit.
Delivery charges and frequency, EPOS and support fees, membership or subscription — the weekly cost of being with that group.
Ongoing marketing or support payments that land every week, not just at signing.
Tiered rebates on your weekly purchases — the tool picks the correct rate for your projected volume automatically.
The signing cheque, signage and fit-out payments — spread fairly across the tie-in period, not counted as free money.
How long you're locked in, which decides how thinly that upfront cheque really spreads.
Open the spreadsheet and work down the lettered sections, entering your figures for each of the two offers in the blue cells. Every black number calculates itself. Here's what each section is asking for.
Your current weekly sales, any % sales uplift you realistically expect from that group's range, and the gross margin % each one offers. The tool works out your projected sales and weekly gross profit from these.
Delivery cost and how many deliveries a week, plus service/support, EPOS and membership fees. Two spare "bespoke" lines let you add anything unusual to a particular deal. These are what the group costs you to run with, every week.
Any weekly marketing or support money the group pays you on an ongoing basis. This is money coming back to you, so it lifts the deal's value.
Many groups pay a rebate that rises with your purchases. Enter up to five tiers per offer — the purchase threshold and the rebate % at each. The tool finds the highest tier your projected volume reaches and applies that rate automatically. Your weekly purchases are pre-filled from your projected sales, but you can override it.
The signing cheque, signage and fit-out payments, and the agreement length in months. Crucially, the tool spreads the upfront across the tie-in rather than treating it as a windfall — because a £20k cheque on a 5-year deal is really about £77 a week, not a fortune.
Only ever type into the blue cells. The black cells are the tool's calculations — leave them alone and they'll fill themselves in as you go.
Once both offers are filled in, the Results and Crossover sections do the thinking. These are the figures to look at:
For each offer, the tool gives a true monthly value — gross profit, plus incentives and rebate, minus costs, with the upfront cheque spread fairly across the term. It then shows the true annual value and the total over the whole agreement. This is the honest worth of each deal, like for like. Higher wins.
If one deal has a bigger cheque but earns less each month, the tool tells you how many months that upfront advantage lasts before the better-margin deal overtakes it. Compare that number to your tie-in length: if the crossover comes well before the end of the term, the big cheque is a false economy.
At the very bottom, the tool names the better deal over the full term and by how much. That single line is your decision — backed by every lever, over the whole tie-in, not just the size of the opening cheque.
A worked example of the thinking: Offer 1 dangles £20,000 up front but runs 1% lower margin. On £15,000 weekly sales that's about £150 a week — roughly £650 a month — less gross profit. The £20,000, spread over a 5-year tie, is about £333 a month. So Offer 1 is ahead by £333 but behind by £650 every month: it's actually the worse deal from day one. The tool surfaces exactly that, instead of letting the cheque win the argument.
Download the spreadsheet, drop in the two deals on the table, and see which one genuinely wins over the full term.
Symbol_Group_Comparison.xlsx to your device.