Guides
ATM route business plan: key sections
An ATM route business plan should state its operating model, pipeline, cash needs, costs, revenue, break-even math, compliance and stop rules.
What to take away
- A route plan is read by a banker, a processor and sometimes a seller, and each of them opens it looking for a different weakness.
- The section most plans are missing is the one explaining where the vault cash comes from and how long it stays out.
- Write the placement pipeline as a count of venues at each stage, not as a description of your enthusiasm.
- Show the revenue, costs and break-even assumptions for each machine and for the route as a whole.
- Put the numbers that would make you stop in writing, before you have any reason to argue with them.
- Every claim about volume should say which machine, which month, and where the figure came from.
An ATM route business plan is more useful as an operating document than as a pitch.
The plan's real job is to survive contact with its readers, each with a specific reason to be skeptical, and leave you a document to check yourself against a year later. The sections below outline the operating questions and decisions to put in writing.
Who reads it, and what they are checking
Who reads it
| Reader | What they are really asking | What satisfies them |
|---|---|---|
| The bank | Where does the cash come from and where does it go back to | A clear source of funds, a settlement account plan, and an owner who understands their own reporting duties |
| The processor | Is this operator going to create problems | Named responsibility for loads, reconciliation and incident reporting |
| A route seller or lender | Can this person carry the payments | Cost lines that include the float and the vehicle, not only the hardware |
| You, next year | Was I right | Written assumptions with dates on them |
Write for all four. A plan that only flatters the first is not a plan.
Readers and what they check
Reader
- Bank
- Cash source and return
- Processor
- Will operator cause problems
- Seller or lender
- Can they carry payments
- You next year
- Was I right
Really asking
- Bank
- Funds source, settlement plan
- Processor
- Named load and reconciliation duties
- Seller or lender
- Float and vehicle in costs
- You next year
- Written dated assumptions
What satisfies
- Bank
- Processor
- Seller or lender
- You next year
The operating model, in one paragraph
State plainly whether you own the machines, place machines a merchant owns, service someone else's fleet, or some mixture. Name every party in the transaction path: cardholder, network, issuer, processor, sponsoring bank, you, the venue. If you cannot name them in order, the model is not decided yet, and nothing downstream in the plan will hold.
A mixed model is allowed. What is not allowed is a plan that quietly runs two models and reports one set of economics for both. Say which machines sit under which arrangement, and read what changes as a route gets larger before you assume the mixture will still be manageable at thirty stops.
The placement pipeline
Investors and lenders read sales optimism for a living. Give them counts instead.
Placement pipeline stages
- Venues identified and worth approaching
- Spoken to the person who can sign
- Venues that have seen written terms
- Signed agreements
- Machines installed and settling
Say how many sit at each stage today, and what you have observed about how many fall out between stages. Do not forecast a conversion rate you have never measured. Where the pipeline is empty because you have not started, say that. The method for filling it belongs in the material on finding and keeping hosts, not in the plan.
The cash plan
This is the section that separates a serious plan from a hopeful one.
Cash plan essentials
- Cash per machine load and how derived
- Days from withdrawal to reimbursement, in writing
- Total cash held across route at any moment
- Cash sourceown, borrowed, or CIT partner
- Plan if settlement slows over long holiday
For each machine, state the planned float and how you will fund it, the total vault cash required, and how cash moves through the settlement account. Set out the replenishment schedule, who handles it—including whether you will use a cash-in-transit (CIT) courier—and the expected time between loading cash and having it available again. Separate tested observations from planning assumptions. For the bank discussion, read FinCEN's Statement on Providing Banking Services to Money Services Businesses and ask your sponsoring bank how its risk-based due diligence applies to your route.
Costs that are not the machine
New plans list hardware and stop. List installation and mounting, connectivity per machine, processing, receipt paper and consumables covered in the sourcing and stock material. Add the vehicle, fuel and insurance, cash handling, service parts, host commission, and your own time priced at something. For each line, record a current quote, contract rate, or observed invoice, note its unit basis, and label any unverified amount as an assumption.
Separate one-time costs from recurring costs, and show which costs vary by machine, transaction, or route. A lender will do this anyway, and doing it yourself first tells you which line to attack.
Revenue, contribution and break-even
State which revenue the route actually receives: surcharge income retained by the operator, interchange, or other transaction income paid by the processor when the agreement provides for it. Name the processor and sponsoring bank in the plan, describe payout timing, and distinguish the amount charged to a cardholder from the amount credited to the operator. Separate observed transaction counts from forecasts and assumptions.
For each machine, show monthly completed withdrawals and the average transaction income the operator retains. Subtract transaction-based processing charges, host commissions and other variable costs to calculate contribution; support the inputs with processor statements, placement agreements or clearly labeled assumptions. Do not count vault cash loaded into the ATM as an operating expense.
Subtract recurring fixed operating costs from total route contribution to project operating profit. Show break-even transactions as monthly fixed costs divided by average contribution per completed withdrawal after variable costs. Include a machine-level monthly schedule and a route-level rollup, and state how shared costs are allocated so route averages do not hide an unprofitable placement.
Compliance, stated as questions
Treat this section as an applicability review, not a blanket claim that every rule applies to every ATM operator. Ask whether your activities trigger Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) or anti-money laundering (AML) obligations, and which customer identification program (CIP) duties belong to you versus your sponsoring bank or processor. Ask FinCEN whether your activities make you a money services business (MSB) that must register using Registration of Money Services Business, FinCEN Form 107, and ask your state banking or money transmitter regulator whether you need a money transmitter license (MTL) or related filing through NMLS.
Record the date you asked and the answer you got, including any limits or conditions. The compliance and licensing overview sets out which body owns which question.
For tax identification and recordkeeping questions, use the IRS's Starting or Ending a Business FAQs. For permits, insurance, and financing, use the SBA's 10 Steps to Start Your Business guide.
The numbers that would make you stop
Write these while you are calm: a withdrawal count per machine below which a placement is removed; a downtime level that triggers a hardware decision; a cash-out-of-pocket level beyond which no machine is added; and a period of unexplained reconciliation differences that stops loading entirely. For each, write the numeric threshold, the action it triggers, and the data or assumption behind it; review and revise thresholds as you gather route data.
Give each one a date for review. Then read the ordered startup sequence and check that nothing in your plan asks you to skip a stage.
Common questions
How long should it be?
Short enough that you reread it. A plan nobody opens after the loan clears has done half its job at most.
Should it include projections?
Include the assumptions and the arithmetic that turns them into projections, so a reader can change one input and see what breaks. A projected total with no visible working is not evidence of anything.
What if I have no data yet?
Then the plan says so, and describes the smallest test that would produce data: one machine, one venue, ninety days, and a written list of what you expect to see.
