How it is worked out
Times a year: "a working day" counts 5 days in each working week, "a week" counts the working weeks you entered, and "a month" counts 12 months. Hours a year are minutes each time × times a year × people ÷ 60. Working days are those hours ÷ 8. The cost is the hours × the cost of one hour, if you entered one.
What to do with the number
These bands are our rule of thumb, not a law:
- Under 20 hours a year: a checklist or a template usually does the job. Building something rarely pays back.
- 20 to 100 hours a year: worth a small automation, often a scheduled script or a spreadsheet that fills itself, with a person checking the result.
- Over 100 hours a year: worth a proper look, especially if mistakes in the task cost money.
Time is only half of it. A task that is quick but often goes wrong, or one that only one person knows how to do, can deserve more attention than its hours suggest. The automation checklist scores the rest in seven questions, and how to choose what to automate first helps when you have several candidates.
Before you automate it
Do the task by hand a few more times and write down every step, including the checks. An automation copies the process you describe, gaps included. If the task is a weekly report, start with how to automate a weekly report.
If the number is bigger than you expected, email us the task in one line. We will tell you honestly whether it is worth automating.