Which processes to automate first and how to calculate the return

The savings formula

For each candidate process you need four figures:

• Hours per month it takes today.
• Cost per hour of the people doing it, contributions included.
• Automatable share: how much of the work would stop being done by hand.
• Cost of the mistakes happening today, if any.

With them:

Monthly savings = hours per month × cost per hour × automatable share + mistakes avoided

And to know when the investment pays back:

Payback period (months) = investment ÷ (monthly savings − monthly maintenance)

An example with three processes

A service company with an administration team has three candidates.

Looking only at hours, invoice posting clearly wins. But two things are missing.

Mistakes change the order

Suppose that every month three client files slip through with incomplete documents, and each costs on average two hours to fix and some friction with the client. In time alone that's €150 more per month, and onboarding goes from €350 to €500 in monthly savings. If those mistakes also delay payments, the gap grows.

Effort counts too

• Invoices: the data arrives as PDFs by email and the ERP has an API. Low effort.
• Report: data has to be pulled from three different systems, one without an API. Medium effort.
• Client onboarding: documents arrive through several channels and in varied formats. Medium to high effort, although this is where a digital employee handles variety well.

The payback period

Suppose, purely as an example, an investment of €5,000 and €100 a month in maintenance to automate invoice posting:

€5,000 ÷ (€567 − €100) = 10.7 months.

From then on, the automation saves around €5,600 a year for as long as the process exists.

The priority matrix

Place each process on two axes: impact (savings, mistakes avoided and speed) and effort (number of systems, data quality and number of exceptions).

• High impact, low effort: start here.
• High impact, high effort: plan it as the second project, once you have results.
• Low impact, low effort: quick wins, useful for building the team's confidence.
• Low impact, high effort: drop it.

What the formula leaves out

Some benefits are hard to convert into euros, but they're real:

• Response speed. Replying to a client within minutes changes sales, and you can estimate it with the lead response cost calculator.
• Capacity to grow. Handling twice the volume without doubling the team.
• Less dependence on specific people. The process stops living only in the head of whoever does it.

When it isn't worth it

• When the task takes few hours a month and the automation would take years to pay back.
• When the process changes constantly.
• When your software already has a feature that solves it and nobody has switched it on.

Run the numbers with your data

The savings calculator applies this formula to your team in a minute. And if you want the calculation process by process, we do it with you in a free audit. Before choosing, also go over where to start with process automation in an SMB.