Free tool
Automation ROI calculator for business processes
Find out what it costs per year to run a process by hand, how many hours you can free up and how many months a custom system takes to pay for itself.
Fill it in with how your operation actually works
The result updates with every change. Nothing leaves your browser unless you want it to.
Everyone who touches it today, even part-time.
Only time spent on this process: typing, checking, copying between systems.
Fully loaded cost — salary plus taxes and benefits, divided by hours worked. Not take-home pay.
22 is the usual average. Adjust it if the process is weekly or seasonal.
It is almost never 100%: exceptions, approvals and the case only a person can settle remain. 60% to 80% is the common range.
Optional — to see the payback
If you already have an investment estimate, add it to see how many months it takes to pay off.
How the math works
No black box. The formula is right below — check it, disagree with it, adjust it.
Time becomes hours
People × minutes per day × working days. That is the volume of hours the process eats every month.
Hours become money
Those hours are multiplied by the fully loaded hourly cost — salary plus taxes, not take-home pay.
Not everything can be automated
Savings only count the share you marked as automatable, minus what it costs to keep the system running.
The investment pays off in N months
Payback divides the investment by the monthly savings. If savings do not cover upkeep, the tool says so instead of inventing a deadline.
The formula, exactly as it is in the code
hours/month = people × (minutes ÷ 60) × working days cost/month = hours/month × hourly cost cost/year = cost/month × 12 hours freed = hours/month × 12 × automatable % savings/year = cost/year × automatable % − upkeep × 12 payback (months) = investment ÷ (savings/year ÷ 12) 3-year net gain = savings/year × 3 − investment
No inflation adjustment, no opportunity cost and no quality gain — direct time only. In practice savings tend to be larger than this, because rework and errors are not counted here.
You have the number. What now?
It depends on where the time is going. These are the three most common routes.
Custom system
When the process is yours and no off-the-shelf software fits without a workaround.
Systems and API integration
When time is lost copying data between systems. Nothing gets replaced here: what already exists gets connected.
AI applied to the process
When the bottleneck is reading, classifying or replying — work that currently sits on someone's desk.
Frequently asked questions
Use it to size the problem. It tells you whether the issue is worth tens or hundreds of thousands per year, and that is what decides whether automating is worth it. The quote itself depends on scope, and nobody estimates scope without looking at the process.
The fully loaded one: salary plus taxes, benefits and provisions, divided by the hours actually worked in the month. It usually lands between 1.6 and 2 times gross salary. Using take-home pay understates the real cost of the process.
Because exceptions remain. A good system handles the predictable path and hands the rest back to a person — which is exactly where it adds value, by leaving the team on work that needs judgement. 60% to 80% is the range we see most often.
Rarely, and that is almost never the goal. In most cases the same team absorbs a larger volume without hiring, or goes back to the work it was hired for. The math holds either way: the cost of the hour is the same, what changes is what it produces.
No. The calculation runs in your browser and nothing is sent until you fill in and submit the form. The values that appear in the page address are there so you can share the scenario with someone — if you would rather not, just delete everything after the question mark.
Yes. Convert it to a daily average or adjust the working days: a monthly close that takes 8 hours becomes 1 working day of 480 minutes, and the annual total comes out the same.
Want to check that number with people who have done the math before?
Describe the process and we will come back with a read on what to automate first. If you clicked “Send these numbers to the brief”, they are already in the field below.
Rather talk before filling in a form?
Send us the number the calculator gave you and we will tell you, with no strings attached, whether automating this process is worth it.