Automation ROI calculator

How it works

1. Enter how many people do the task and how many hours per week each spends on it.
2. Add the hourly cost of those people, including payroll taxes and benefits.
3. Adjust what percentage of that work can be automated and what it would cost.
4. Click calculate to see annual savings, hours freed, payback months and the equivalent in full-time roles.

How do you calculate automation savings?

The formula is public, and you can repeat it in a spreadsheet:

• Hours freed per year = people × hours per week × 46 weeks × % automatable.
• Annual savings = hours freed × hourly cost.
• Payback months = investment ÷ annual savings × 12.
• Full-time equivalents = hours freed ÷ 1,760.

We use 46 weeks because that is roughly what people work in a year after holidays and time off. The 1,760 hours match about one full-time year.

Example with the default values: 5 people × 8 hours × 46 weeks × 60% = 1,104 hours a year. At €25 an hour that is €27,600 in annual savings, and a €4,000 investment pays back in 1.7 months.

Which numbers should you enter?

The result is only as good as the inputs. For hourly cost, divide the person's annual cost (gross salary plus employer taxes and benefits, often 20-30% on top) by the hours worked per year. If you do not have it, €20-30 an hour is a reasonable range for administrative roles.

The automatable percentage is the trickiest number. Be cautious: tasks like copying data between systems or sorting emails automate almost completely, while work that needs judgment or customer contact automates in part. If in doubt, start at 40-50%.

For the investment, the calculator asks for a figure of your own. If you do not have one yet, tell us about your case and we send a written proposal with a fixed budget per phase after a free first call.

How do you interpret the result?

If payback comes in under 12 months, the process is a good pilot candidate. Between 12 and 24 months, it is worth doing if it also cuts errors or response times. Above 24 months, look for another process with more volume.

Keep two limits in mind. Freed hours do not turn into savings unless someone spends them on something else: the real value depends on what your team does with that time. And the calculator leaves out monthly maintenance and AI API usage, which for a small business typically runs €20 to €120 a month.

The next step is to test it with real data. In our AI automation service, we time the tasks before proposing anything.

Updated: 29 September 2026