We find the real bottleneck first
Most of what people want to automate is not the expensive part. We scope the task, find where the hours actually go, and automate that, not the demo-friendly bit.
Free tool
See what the manual version is costing you
Every repetitive task your team does by hand has a price: the hours, times the wage, times fifty-two weeks. Put in the numbers and see the yearly cost, then what automating it saves.
Your own numbers, one assumption you control: how much of the task is genuinely automatable. Nothing invented.
Run the numbers
What is doing it by hand costing you?
Set the task's hours, the people on it, the loaded hourly cost, and how much of it can be automated. The result updates as you move the sliders.
1
The task2
The cost3
Your assumption4
ResultDescribe the manual task
How many hours a week it takes, and how many people are on it.
10 hrs/wk
1 hrs/wk60 hrs/wk
3 people
1 people50 people
Understand the metric
How to calculate the ROI of automating a manual task
Automation ROI is the return you get from replacing repetitive manual work with software that does it for you. Before you can judge whether a task is worth automating, you need the cost of doing it by hand: the hours, times the people, times a loaded hourly rate, across the year. This calculator works out that annual cost and the slice automation takes off it, from your numbers and one assumption you control.
What counts as automatable work
The strongest automation candidates are repetitive, rules-based and high-volume: data entry, invoice processing, copying information between systems, first-line replies. Work that follows the same steps every time sits high on the automatable scale. Judgement-heavy work that changes case by case sits lower, and honest scoping keeps that share realistic.
How to read your result
The result is the yearly cost of the manual task and the portion automation removes. A high number at a modest automatable share means the task is a strong candidate. If the saving does not clear the cost of building and running the automation, the maths is telling you to leave it manual for now.
Use loaded cost, not just wage
Use a loaded hourly cost, the wage plus the overhead that comes with employing someone, not the bare salary rate. It is the honest cost of an hour of that person's time, and it is usually higher than the number people reach for first.
How it is calculated
Annual saving = weekly hours × people × loaded hourly rate × 52 × automatable share
- 1Add up the weekly hoursHours a week the task takes across everyone who touches it.
- 2Apply the loaded hourly costMultiply by a realistic all-in cost per hour, wage plus overhead.
- 3Annualise itMultiply by 52 weeks to get the yearly cost of doing it by hand.
- 4Apply the automatable shareMultiply the annual cost by the share that can be automated to get the saving.
The build
What we'd automate it with
Software that does the work
An agent or automation that completes the task end to end: reads the input, does the steps, writes the result back into your systems. Not a chatbot that hands it back to you.
Checked before it acts
Validated before it touches anything that matters, tested so a model update cannot break it quietly, and monitored once it is live. Production discipline, not a weekend script.
You own and run it
Built for your business and handed over, so your team runs it without us. Not a platform seat you rent forever.
Read next
Where this shows up
Questions
Questions
Hours a week on the task, times the people doing it, times the loaded hourly cost, times fifty-two weeks. The saving is that yearly cost times the automatable share you set. Every figure is yours.
Not just the wage. The wage plus the overhead that comes with it. A rough all-in cost per hour of the person's time is close enough for this.
It varies, which is why you set it. Repetitive, rules-based work with clear inputs sits high. Judgement-heavy work sits lower. We default it to a middle figure and let you move it.
Yes. Most things people try to solve with AI are not AI problems, and you will hear that from us before you spend. If the maths does not clear the cost of building it, we will say so.
Want to know what it takes to automate this one properly? Book a 30-min call and we will scope it against your real numbers.
Book a 30-min call →