Automation payback calculator
Work out what a process actually costs you, what an automation would realistically remove, and how long it takes to pay for itself. Nothing you enter is sent anywhere and there is no form at the end of it.
They quote gross hours. No automation handles 100% of cases. Document work realistically reaches 75% to 90% straight through after tuning, and the remainder goes to a person in a review queue. A calculator that ignores that overstates the saving by a fifth or more.
This one asks for the straight-through rate and shows you both numbers, because the gap between them is the difference between a business case that survives and one that is abandoned six months later.
The second omission is worse. A system keeps costing something after launch: the changes you ask for, a plan if you take one, and the platform it runs on. So the real question is not only when the setup pays back but whether the monthly saving clears the monthly cost at all. This one counts all three.
Your process
What it would cost
What that means
| Gross hours a month | , |
|---|---|
| Straight-through rate | , |
| Hours still needing a person | , |
| Net hours removed | , |
| Value of those hours each month | , |
| Changes | , |
| Maintenance plan | , |
| Platform and model | , |
| Total monthly cost | , |
| Net monthly benefit | , |
| Payback on the setup | , |
| Net position after year one | , |
| Net position after three years | , |
How to read the answer
Three things worth knowing before you act on a number this tool produced.
Under six months is not a close call
If the payback lands inside half a year, the precision of your inputs stops mattering. The case survives being wrong about the straight-through rate, the hourly cost and the volume all at once. Stop analyzing and go.
Over two years usually means no, on hours alone
But check the second-order benefits before rejecting it. Collections chasing saves few hours and improves working capital by a multiple. Lead routing saves few hours and changes conversion. Anything that keeps running when someone is away has a continuity value no hours model captures. Make those arguments explicitly rather than inflating the hours to reach the answer you wanted.
The uncomfortable middle
Between six months and two years is where the inputs actually matter, and where people stop doing the arithmetic. If you are here, go and measure the volume and the minutes properly rather than estimating them. The difference between a guess and a measurement is usually enough to flip the decision.
Your time during the build: usually an hour or two handing over your material, plus a short review before it goes live. The one-off of cleaning any data the automation has to match on. And the value of errors that stop happening, which is real and which we will not put a number on for you, because we would be guessing.
Why we published this
It tells you not to buy things. That is deliberate. A calculator that always produces a good answer is marketing, and it is the same instinct that produces proposals promising 100% automation.
The arithmetic here is the arithmetic we run during scoping, with the same straight-through assumptions we would apply to your build. If it says no for your process, the honest thing is for you to find that out here rather than after an invoice. What should not be automated covers the categories where the answer is usually no.
Got a number you want checked?
We measure the baseline properly during scoping, so there is something real to judge the result against later. Thirty minutes, no charge, and a written proposal.
You will talk to Fayez or Kareem. Nobody else.