Short answer
Add up how many hours a month the process takes today, multiply by the cost of a working hour and add the cost of errors and delays. Compare this with the cost of developing and maintaining the solution. Payback period = investment ÷ monthly savings.
A simple calculation
- Time: how many times a month the process happens × how many minutes it takes.
- Labour cost: hours × the full cost of a working hour (salary + taxes).
- Errors: what errors cost — wrong invoices, double payments, delayed orders.
- Monthly savings = (time + errors) that automation eliminates.
- Payback = development cost ÷ (monthly savings − monthly maintenance cost).
An example with illustrative numbers
If a company receives 400 invoices a month and entering and checking each one takes 5 minutes, that’s about 33 hours a month. If automation removes 80% of this work, around 27 hours are saved every month — over 300 hours a year.
What people often forget to include
- Speed — the customer gets an answer or the goods faster.
- Scale — the company can grow without hiring extra people for this work.
- Control — you can see where every document or order is.
- Employee motivation — less boring work.
When automation doesn’t pay off
When the process is rare, unclear or about to change. In that case, sort out the process first. On costs: how much process automation costs.