How it is calculated
Hours per year = minutes ÷ 60 × times per week × people × 48 working weeks
Cost per year = hours per year × hourly staff cost
48 weeks allows for holidays. Tasks are ranked by annual cost, and the share of the total is shown so you can see where most of the time goes. Often two or three tasks account for most of it.
Running a quick time audit
- Ask each person to note repetitive tasks for one normal week: what, how long, how often.
- Include the small stuff: copying data between systems, sending reminders, chasing, formatting reports.
- Count the time to fix mistakes and handle questions, not just the main steps.
- Paste the list here and look at the top five.
From cost to decision
Cost tells you where the opportunity is. Whether to automate also depends on how rule-based the task is, how many exceptions it has, and what happens if it goes wrong. Score the top tasks with the Automation Suitability Scorecard, compare them in the Automation Priority Matrix, and estimate payback with the Automation ROI Calculator. Sometimes the cheapest fix is simply removing a step nobody needs.