Is this calculator a quote for custom software?

No. It estimates the annual cost of running one workflow manually, so you can judge whether that workflow is worth fixing at all. What a fix costs depends on scope, integrations, and how your process actually runs — that is what a Workflow Review is for. Treat every output here as a planning estimate, not a price or a promise.

What hourly cost should I enter?

Use a fully-loaded cost: wages plus payroll taxes, benefits, and a share of overhead. For many operational roles that lands between $25 and $60 per hour. If you only know base pay, add roughly 25–40%. Underestimating this number is the most common way companies talk themselves out of fixing expensive problems.

My total came out small. Is custom software still worth it?

Probably not — and the calculator will say so. When the manual burden is modest, simpler fixes come first: a better template, a single owner for the workflow, or one less handoff. Purpose-built systems make sense when the burden is large, recurring, and growing with the business.

Interactive Tool

Internal tool ROI calculator

Before anyone argues about what software costs, it helps to know what the manual way already costs. This calculator estimates the annual burden of one manual workflow — the hours spent keying, checking, and chasing, the rework when something comes back wrong, and the interruptions from people asking where their order is.

Every output is an estimate, labeled as such, and depends entirely on the numbers you enter. It is a planning tool, not a quote, a benchmark, or a guarantee of savings.

Example System — cost of a manual workflow

Adjust the inputs to match one workflow in your operation. Every output updates live and is an estimate, not a quote or a guarantee.

Employees involved

People who touch this workflow each week.

Fully-loaded hourly cost($/hr)

Wages plus benefits, taxes, and overhead — not just base pay.

Minutes per transaction(min)

Time to handle one quote, order, claim, or schedule change by hand.

Transactions per week

How many times the workflow runs in a typical week.

Rework / error rate(%)

Share of transactions that come back wrong or incomplete.

Average cost per error($)

Expediting, credits, re-ships, and the time to put it right.

Status requests per week

“Where is my order?” calls, emails, and walk-ups.

Minutes per status request(min)

Time to stop, look it up, and answer — per interruption.

Expected reduction from a purpose-built system(%)

A planning assumption, not a promise. 60% is a common starting point.

Estimate — annual labor burden: $57,600; 36 hrs/week of manual handling
Estimate — annual rework & error burden: $18,000
Estimate — annual status-request burden: $3,200; 2 hrs/week of interruptions
Estimate — total annual cost of the manual workflow: $78,800
Estimate — potential annual recoverable capacity at 60% reduction: $47,280
Estimate — hours per week returned: 22.8 hrs

Suggested next step

At this level of manual burden, the workflow is worth a closer look. A Workflow Review maps where the hours and errors actually go before anyone talks about building software.

Book a Workflow Review

Disclaimer: all outputs are estimates derived from your inputs and simple arithmetic. They are not guarantees of savings, capacity, or return on investment.

How this estimate works

The math is deliberately simple, and shown in full so you can check it against your own numbers. It assumes 50 working weeks per year.

Labor burden = employees × (minutes per transaction ÷ 60) × transactions per week × fully-loaded hourly cost × 50
Rework & error burden = transactions per week × rework rate × average cost per error × 50
Status-request burden = status requests per week × (minutes each ÷ 60) × hourly cost × 50
Total manual burden = the three burdens added together. Potential recoverable capacity = total × your expected-reduction assumption. Hours returned per week = the time-based share of that reduction.

The expected-reduction input is an assumption you control, not a claim we make. Defaulting to 60% reflects what a purpose-built system is usually designed to do — remove re-keying, enforce the checks people skip, and answer status questions before they become interruptions — but your number should come from how your workflow actually runs.

What to measure before you build anything

The calculator is only as honest as its inputs, and most companies have never measured the inputs. Before a build is justified, spend a week counting: how many times the workflow actually runs, how long one pass really takes when you include the checking and the chasing, and how often work comes back wrong. Time a few transactions with a stopwatch. Count the “where is my order?” calls for a week instead of guessing. The goal is not precision — it is replacing a feeling with a number you can defend in a budget conversation.

If you are not sure which workflow to measure first, start with the one people complain about most, then verify it against the signs of a workflow worth automating. Recurring, rule-based, high-volume work — quote approvals, order exceptions, status requests — usually wins over rare, judgment-heavy work.

Why labor burden is almost always underestimated

Ask how long order entry takes and you will hear the time to type the order — maybe four minutes. You will not hear the time to find the email it came from, decode the attachment, check the price against last month’s quote, walk a question to the warehouse, and re-key the correction when the customer changes quantity. The real transaction is two or three times the visible one.

The same blind spot hides in hourly cost. Base pay understates what an hour actually costs the business once taxes, benefits, and overhead are included — often by a third or more. And interruptions are nearly invisible: a two-minute status call costs far more than two minutes once you count the work it broke. This is why spreadsheet-held workflows feel free until someone adds up the hours.

When the total is real and recurring, the next question is what a fix costs. See what custom internal software actually costs to compare the burden against the build.

Keep exploring

Common questions

: No. It estimates the annual cost of running one workflow manually, so you can judge whether that workflow is worth fixing at all. What a fix costs depends on scope, integrations, and how your process actually runs — that is what a Workflow Review is for. Treat every output here as a planning estimate, not a price or a promise.
: Use a fully-loaded cost: wages plus payroll taxes, benefits, and a share of overhead. For many operational roles that lands between $25 and $60 per hour. If you only know base pay, add roughly 25–40%. Underestimating this number is the most common way companies talk themselves out of fixing expensive problems.
: Probably not — and the calculator will say so. When the manual burden is modest, simpler fixes come first: a better template, a single owner for the workflow, or one less handoff. Purpose-built systems make sense when the burden is large, recurring, and growing with the business.

Have a number worth acting on?

A Workflow Review turns your estimate into a mapped workflow: where the hours go, where errors start, and what is worth building first.

Book a Workflow Review Explore Common Operational Problems