How the time savings calculator works
This time savings calculator takes three inputs: how many people are doing the repetitive work, how many hours each spends on it per week, and the share that can be handed off to an automation. It then works out the time saved across your team, broken down into weekly hours, working days, and full-time equivalent weeks per year.
The maths is straightforward. Weekly hours reclaimed = staff x hours x automation share. Multiply that by 48 working weeks and you get the annual figure. Divide by 8 for working days, or by 38 for full-time equivalent weeks. Simple numbers, but they tend to surprise people.
If you want to put a dollar figure on those hours, head to our Automation ROI Calculator: it adds your hourly rate and a build cost to show payback period and three-year net saving.
What you could do with the time back
The obvious answer is "more billable work". But for most small businesses, the time goes back into the things that grow the business: client relationships, creative work, strategy, or just finishing the day at a reasonable hour.
A team of 4 reclaiming 22 hours a week gets back roughly half a full-time person. That's a hire you don't have to make, or a backlog that actually clears. The compounding effect over a year is what makes automation worth the upfront cost.
For background on what workflow automation actually involves, read our guide: what is workflow automation?
Where the hours usually hide
If you're not sure what to count, these are the tasks Australian small businesses most commonly automate first:
- Copying data between systems (CRM, accounting software, spreadsheets)
- Sending follow-up and reminder emails on the same trigger every time
- Generating invoices, quotes, and weekly reports from existing data
- Chasing document uploads, signatures, and approvals
- Logging call notes and updating client records after meetings
- Pulling together status updates for internal reporting
- Routing leads or enquiries to the right person or pipeline stage
Add up the hours across your team for any three of those and you'll typically land between 6 and 20 hours a week. That's the number worth putting into the calculator above.
Want a second opinion on your list? Book a free 30-minute call and we'll go through it with you, including the jobs that aren't worth automating.
