You got the offer. Now comes the highest-paid hour of the whole job search — and the moment most people feel least equipped, so they accept the first number out of relief and quietly leave money on the table.
This toolkit is the preparation that turns that hour from something you dread into something you’ve already rehearsed: your real number worked out, your target and walk-away fixed, your counter built, and the exact words ready to send. Almost every offer has room. You close the gap with preparation, not nerve — and this is the preparation, in one owned file.
See the offer’s real number — and the gap
Base salary hides the truth. The Total-Comp Calculator folds base, bonus, the annual value of equity, a signing bonus spread over the years you’ll stay, and the retirement match — less what you pay in health premiums and commuting — into one comparable effective annual value, for each offer, your current job, and the target you set.
Then the Gap vs Target row does the one thing a blank spreadsheet never will: it turns “it feels a bit low” into a real dollar figure for exactly how far the offer has to travel. A small gap is a nudge; a wide one is a plan.
Win it before you’re in the room
Negotiation is decided in the ten minutes you spend fixing three numbers, from a calm head, before anyone’s on the phone:
- Your target — what you’re aiming for, grounded in the calculator, not a wish.
- Your walk-away — the floor you decide in advance and never state, so a warm conversation can’t talk you under it.
- Your BATNA — your Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement: what you’ll actually do if they say no. A real alternative is where your calm, and your leverage, come from.
The Negotiation Prep tab holds all three, plus your anchor and the concessions you’ll happily trade.
Build a specific, sendable counter
Vague asks get vague answers. The Counter Builder assembles your request lever by lever — base, bonus, signing, equity, start date, PTO, remote days, title — with the offer on the table beside your ask, and the cash rows totaled so you see the size of your request before you send it.
The exact words to send
Knowing what to ask is only half of it — the other half is saying it well. The Scripts tab and the included 11-script Negotiation Script Bank cover every turn the conversation can take: buying time, the counter, the competing-offer play, the pivot for when base won’t move, the counter-to-the-counter, asking for a raise, and accepting or declining gracefully. Your anchor and target are even pulled straight into the templates for you. Copy, swap the blanks, send.
Own it, don’t rent it
Between a free listicle and a paid coach sits the owned kit — the numbers and the words worked out, yours to keep. Buy it once and reuse it for this offer, the next one, and every raise after. No login, no subscription, no hourly rate.
Works in Excel, Google Sheets, and LibreOffice Calc, with a one-click “Make a copy” Google Sheets version — no importing, nothing to rebuild.
Just deciding which offer to take? The Job-Offer Decision Helper scores competing offers side by side. And you can try the core math free first with the Total-Comp Calculator — compare two offers right in your browser, no sign-up.
A note on what this is: a planning and communication template, not financial, career, legal, or tax advice, and not a promise of any particular outcome. The example figures are fictional and illustrative, and the scripts are starting points to put in your own words. Value any equity conservatively; a private company’s paper number is not cash.
