What is that task
actually costing you?
Plug in any manual task. The calculator shows the annual cost, 5-year cost, and how much of a full-time equivalent you are quietly spending on it. No email required. No form to fill in. Just the number.
- Hours lost per year
- 312 hrs
- Cost over 5 years
- $55,645
- Staff affected
- 1 person
The assumptions, out in the open.
Hours per year
We scale whatever you enter to an annual figure using standard Australian working weeks (48 per year, after four weeks of annual leave). Daily tasks become 260 per year. Weekly tasks become 52. Monthly tasks become 12.
Full-time equivalent
We use 1,824 hours per year as a single FTE — 38 hours per week × 48 working weeks. The bar shows how much of one person's entire year the task is quietly eating.
Hourly rate default
The default hourly rate of $35.67 is the SCHADS Award Level 2, pay point 2 base rate from 1 July 2025, as published in the Fair Work Pay Guide for MA000100. Most real positions cost more once penalties, on-costs, and supervisor rates are added, so this is a deliberately conservative floor. A salary mode is also available — enter an annual figure and the calculator converts it to an hourly rate using 1,824 FTE hours per year.
What this does not include
Error cost, compliance risk, staff turnover from burnout, and the opportunity cost of client hours lost to admin. Those are real and often exceed the direct labour cost. We surface them properly during an opportunity assessment.
The calculator tells you the cost.
The assessment tells you what to do about it.
If the number is bigger than you expected, the assessment is $1,500 fixed fee and gives you a roadmap you could hand to any automation team.