A Post Counter Inside a Village Shop: The Daily Transaction Count That Covers an Agency's Costs

Where a staffed post office cannot pay, a counter inside an existing shop — an agency — is the standard alternative, but agencies are opened on enthusiasm and closed on arithmetic. This paper states the arithmetic. The agency's fixed monthly costs to the operator are USD 99.0 (retainer USD 45, equipment and training USD 22, cash float USD 14, audit visits USD 18), and each transaction earns a stated net USD 0.31. Break-even is 319 transactions a month, about 12.3 a day over 26 trading days. The staffed sub-office it replaces costs USD 610.0 a month, so at agency volumes the saving is large — but the per-transaction commission model means the agency's costs stay low exactly because its volume is low; a table across net revenues from USD 0.15 to USD 0.60 shows break-even falling from over twenty transactions a day to under seven, and the paper identifies the volume at which the settlement has outgrown the agency form itself. SIMULATED, NOT MEASURED.