Free tool

How much money is your business losing by not automating?

Check off the repetitive tasks your team does by hand and instantly see how many hours and how much money slip away every year — compared with businesses in your industry — and how much you could recover by automating them. No sign-up, no email required.

Tell us about your business

Everyone who enters data, answers routine messages or does manual follow-up (including you).
Salary + payroll costs ÷ monthly hours. An estimate is fine.
We use it to show you what you could do with the time you recover.
Based on your tasks, we estimate you could automate %
I'd rather set the percentage myself
Manual setting: 50%
Approximate one-time project cost, used to calculate ROI and payback time.
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Monthly admin cost
What manual admin work costs you every month today.
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Yearly admin cost
The same cost, over a full year. It usually surprises.
Admin hours per year
People-hours spent on repetitive tasks every year.
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Automatable hours per year
Based on the tasks you said are done by hand.
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Recoverable money per year
A prudent estimate: 80% of the value of automatable time.
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Return on investment (year 1)
How much every dollar invested returns in the first year.
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You recover the investment by
Estimated month when accumulated savings pay for the project.
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Opportunity level
How big the improvement margin is in your case.

How do you compare with your industry?

Your estimate Industry average*
*Reference values based on typical automation adoption among small and mid-sized businesses.

✨ With the time you recover, you could…

more customers served per year (at 30 min per customer)
more invoices issued per year (at 6 min per invoice)
more inquiries answered per year (at 5 min per inquiry)
full working days freed up per year

Yearly cost: today vs. automated

Where do the hours go?

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How do we calculate these numbers? (exact formulas)
  • Admin hours per month = people × weekly hours × 4.33 weeks.
  • Monthly admin cost = hours per month × hourly cost. Yearly = × 12.
  • Estimated automatable % = a 12% base + a weight for each task you checked (for example, answering WhatsApp adds 11 points; entering invoices, 10). Cap: 80%. You can override it with the manual setting.
  • Automatable hours per year = yearly hours × automatable %.
  • Recoverable money per year = yearly cost × automatable % × 80%. Prudence factor: no automation captures 100% of the time — there is always supervision and edge cases.
  • Return on investment (year 1) = (yearly savings − investment) ÷ investment × 100.
  • Payback = investment ÷ monthly savings (in months).
  • Equivalences = recovered hours (automatable × 80%) converted with typical times: customer 30 min · invoice 6 min · inquiry 5 min · working day 8 h.

Get a personalized plan with the 5 automations that would impact your business most

With the data you entered, we already know where to start. In the free assessment we identify your 5 highest-return processes, with realistic investment and timelines. No strings attached.

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Does your day disappear into admin tasks?

If you keep wondering how to save time in your business, start by measuring it: in most small and mid-sized businesses, 30% to 60% of admin time goes to repetitive tasks — entering the same data into two systems, answering the same WhatsApp questions, chasing receipts, updating spreadsheets, building the same weekly report. Those are working hours you pay for every month that don't grow the business.

How much does an admin employee really cost? More than the salary: it's the hourly value multiplied by the hours lost to mechanical work. This calculator turns it into a concrete number with your own data, and shows how much of that cost you can recover by reducing manual admin tasks.

Automating WhatsApp, invoicing and reminders

The tasks that give back the most time when automated are the everyday ones: automating WhatsApp (answers to frequent questions, confirmations, follow-up), automating invoicing (issuing, sending and payment reminders), bookings and appointments, and the reports built by hand today. No need to switch systems or hire more people: it's about making the repetitive parts run on their own.

Improve your SMB's productivity without working longer hours

Cutting admin costs isn't about replacing people: it's about improving productivity by recovering valuable hours for customers, sales and growth. This calculator gives you an honest starting point — your numbers, your tasks, formulas in plain sight and prudent estimates — plus a comparison with your industry's average.

Frequently asked questions

Which processes can be automated in a business?

The most common: invoicing and collections, customer reminders, order entry, answers to frequent questions, recurring reports, quote follow-up, reconciliations and internal alerts. Rule of thumb: if a task repeats the same way every week and follows clear steps, it can almost certainly be automated.

How much does it cost to automate processes in an SMB?

It depends on how many processes and how complex they are. Projects usually start with one or two high-impact processes, with a contained initial investment that — as this calculator shows — pays for itself within months when the admin load is significant.

Does automation replace my employees?

No: it replaces the mechanical tasks, not the people. The goal is for your team to stop losing hours to repetitive work and spend them on what generates revenue: service, sales and better customer experience.

Are the calculator's results exact?

They are a serious estimate based on your data, the tasks you checked and visible formulas. We apply an 80% prudence factor on automatable time so the savings are never inflated. The precise number comes from an assessment of your actual processes.

How long until I see results?

The first automated processes are usually running within weeks, and the savings start the same month they go live. Typical payback for SMBs with a medium admin load is 3 to 12 months.

How much does an admin employee really cost?

Much more than the salary: the real cost is the hourly value (salary plus payroll costs) multiplied by the hours spent on repetitive tasks. With 12 weekly hours of manual work per person, a 4-person admin team easily exceeds tens of thousands of dollars a year in repeatable tasks alone. The calculator gives you your exact number.

Can WhatsApp and invoicing be automated?

Yes — and they're among the highest-return: automatic replies to frequent questions, confirmations and follow-up on WhatsApp; and issuing, sending and payment reminders for invoices without manual work. They're usually the first processes to automate because of their immediate impact.

How do I start saving time in my business?

Three steps: (1) measure how many hours go to repetitive tasks — this calculator does it for you —, (2) pick the 2 or 3 processes that consume the most time, and (3) automate those first. That order maximizes return and makes the project pay for itself.

Despacho Design
Process automation and digital solutions for small and mid-sized businesses. Fewer repetitive tasks, more time for your business.