Published 25 October 2026 · by the StepOneFlow team
Most automation ideas sound good in a meeting. Far fewer survive a simple question: what does this task cost us today, and what would we get back? Answering it takes five numbers and ten minutes. This is the method behind our savings calculator.
1. Measure the time the task really takes
Pick one task and time it, not from memory but with a stopwatch, over a few days. You need two figures:
- How many people do it.
- How many hours a day each of them spends on it, on average.
If the task is counted in items rather than hours, multiply: 80 emails a day at 3 minutes each is 4 hours a day for the team.
2. Turn the hours into money
Use the all-in cost per hour: salary plus employer costs, not the gross wage alone. Then:
hours a year = people × hours a day × working days a week × working weeks a year
cost a year = hours a year × cost per hour
We use 5 days a week and 46 working weeks a year, which leaves room for holidays and public holidays. A month is a twelfth of the year.
3. Be honest about how much can be automated
Almost no task is 100% automatable. Something is always unclear: a missing order number, an invoice that does not match, a customer who writes in a different language. A person should check those. In practice, 50 to 85% of a repetitive office task can usually be taken over, depending on how rule-based and digital the input is. Pick a share you would defend in front of your finance team.
savings a year = cost a year × share automated
A worked example
| Input | Value |
|---|---|
| Task | Answering customer emails |
| People doing it | 3 |
| Hours a day, each | 1.5 |
| Cost per hour, all-in | €45 |
| Share automated | 60% |
3 × 1.5 × 5 × 46 = 1,035 hours a year. At €45 an hour that is €46,575 a year spent on this one task. With 60% automated, €27,945 a year and 621 hours come back: about 0.4 of a full-time job.
4. Take off what the automation costs
Savings alone are not a business case. Subtract:
- The project, once: mapping the process, building and testing.
- Running costs, every year: software licences and monitoring or support.
Two corrections make the sum realistic. People need time to get used to a new way of working, so count only part of the savings in the first year (we use 60% in year 1 and 90% in year 2). And wages rise over time, which makes each saved hour slightly more valuable every year.
5. Read the result the right way
- Payback: the month in which the running total of savings minus costs turns positive. Under a year is a strong case.
- Return per euro: all savings divided by all costs over the period you look at. Above 2 is worth discussing.
- Hours back: often the number your team cares about most, because those hours go to customers and decisions instead of copying.
Common mistakes
- Counting time that does not really disappear, like waiting for a reply.
- Forgetting the exceptions that will still need a person.
- Leaving out licences and maintenance.
- Automating a process that is broken. Fix the process first, then digitalise it.
Try it on your own task
The StepOneFlow savings calculator does all of the above for one task or several, including project and running costs, payback and a 5 or 10 year view. You can share the result with a link or download it as a PDF. Want a second opinion on your numbers? Book a free 30-minute call.