GROSS. — free commercial calculators for UK FMCG brand teams

Gross-to-net: where your revenue goes

GSV, NSV, promo funding and back margin: the waterfall between your invoice and your bank, what a healthy one looks like, and how to model yours free.

GSV, NSV, promo funding and back margin — the waterfall between invoice and bank, and what a healthy one looks like.

Gross sales value (GSV) is your volume at full list price — the number on the invoice, and the one that never moves. Net sales value (NSV) is what survives after trade deductions: promotional funding, back margin, retro payments, range support. The distance between the two is the gross-to-net waterfall, and it is where FMCG businesses lose track of their own economics.

The convention that matters most: when a promotion is supplier-funded, the price cut comes off your invoice, not the retailer's margin. The retailer keeps their percentage; you fund the discount. A 25%-off promotion on a supplier-funded deal deducts GSV × 25% from your line, week after week, for as long as the deal runs.

What a healthy waterfall looks like

For a UK branded grocery business, total trade spend between 10% and 30% of GSV is the broad norm — promotional funding usually the largest slice, then back margin commitments, then everything else. Below 10% usually means early-stage and under-promoted; above 30% means the trading relationship is consuming the brand.

The discipline is to model every deduction as a percentage of GSV and read NSV as a percentage of GSV — "we keep 78 pence in the invoice pound" — because that ratio is comparable across customers, categories and years in a way absolute numbers are not.

Gross margin sits below NSV

Your gross margin is NSV less landed cost: cost of goods plus inbound logistics to the customer's depot. Freight is part of the cost of goods make-up, not an afterthought below the line — a £2-per-case inbound cost on a 24-unit case is 8.3p a unit that has to come out of the same pound as everything else.

Fixed cash commitments — a customer investment behind a listing, gate fees, launch support — sit below gross margin because they do not move with volume. A listing can carry a healthy percentage margin and still hand the whole thing back through one annual cash commitment.

Asked a lot

What is the difference between GSV and NSV?

GSV (gross sales value) is volume at full list price — the invoice value. NSV (net sales value) is GSV minus trade deductions: promo funding, back margin, retros. NSV is the only revenue number that reflects what you actually earn.

What percentage of revenue is normal for trade spend in UK grocery?

Broadly 10–30% of GSV for branded FMCG, with promotional funding the largest component. The right answer depends on category, maturity and how promotional the retailer is — but if you cannot state your own percentage, that is the first problem to fix.

Who pays for supermarket promotions?

Usually the brand, through supplier funding: the retailer keeps their margin percentage and the discount comes off the supplier's invoice. Retailer-funded promotions exist but are the exception, not the default.

Is trade spend the same as marketing spend?

No. Trade spend goes to the retailer (funding, retros, range support) and nets off revenue. Marketing spend goes to media and shoppers and sits in your cost base. Mixing the two is how brands convince themselves a loss-making promotion was brand-building.

The other calculators

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• The Rate Card — Every default in GROSS., what it is, when it was checked and where it comes from. The maths is only as good as

Free, no sign-up. The maths is checked; the defaults are dated and sourced on The Rate Card. VAT number: not applicable. This is a website.