What is your admin actually costing you?
Most small businesses know admin eats their week. Fewer have put a number on it, and almost nobody gets told honestly which bits of it a computer can take over — and which bits it can't. This works both out.
What is an hour of your time worth?
Use your charge-out rate if this time would otherwise be billable work, or your actual cost per hour if it's someone else doing it. If you're not sure, your charge-out rate is the more honest number — it's what the hour could have earned.
Roughly how many hours a week go on each of these?
Across everyone in the business, not just you. Estimate — nobody has this measured, and being roughly right is enough to see the shape of it. Leave anything that doesn't apply at zero.
What that adds up to
Updates as you type.
Where it's going, and what can honestly be automated
Enter some hours above and the breakdown appears here, worst offender first.
Three things this calculator won't pretend
- Saved hours are not saved money — yet. Automating five hours a week gives you five hours. It becomes money when you quote more work, take an extra job, or stop paying overtime for it. If the time just gets absorbed into the day, the win is real for your sanity but invisible in the accounts.
- Nothing here counts the cost of setting it up. Automation takes money and attention before it gives any back. Most of what's below pays for itself inside a year, but "pays for itself" is not "free", and the first month is usually worse than the one before it.
- The ranges are honest, not precise. They're based on which parts of a task are mechanical and which need a person. Your business will land somewhere in the range, and where depends on how consistent your current process is. Messy processes automate badly — that's not a software problem.
What shouldn't be automated at all
Worth saying plainly, because a lot of people selling automation won't. These stay human, and trying to change that usually costs you more than it saves.
- Pricing judgement on anything non-standard. A tool can assemble a quote. Deciding what a tricky job is worth, or whether a client is worth the trouble, is yours.
- The awkward conversation. Bad news, disputes, and a customer who's genuinely upset. An automated reply here reads as contempt.
- Anything you'd sign your name to. Compliance sign-off, safety checks, final inspection. A system can gather the evidence; it can't take the responsibility.
- The relationship itself. The reason repeat clients come back is almost never your invoicing system.
Want a straight answer on what's worth doing first?
A free 30-minute call. We'll look at your actual list, tell you which one or two things are worth automating and which aren't, and you can take that away and do it yourself if you'd rather. No obligation and no pitch deck.
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