Automation ROI calculator
Any finance process, any stack. Put the hours it takes against what a build costs and see the payback in months — plus what the first three years actually look like once running costs are in.
No email required. Nothing is stored. The maths is printed further down the page.
Your numbers
Across everyone involved, not just one person.
Salary plus employer costs, divided by hours worked.
Rule of thumb: the repeatable majority automates, the judgement calls don't. Leave headroom for exceptions.
What it costs to design, build and go live.
Hosting, licences, AI usage and support.
Payback period
18.7 months
On a €18,000 build
Hours saved per year
437
8.4 hours a week
Net saving per year
€11,578
€13,978 of time, less €2,400 running cost
Net, first year
-€6,422
After the build cost
Net, three years
€16,733
Build paid once, running cost every year
How this is calculated
Hours saved per year
Hours per week × 52 × automatable %
Net saving per year
(Hours saved per year × loaded hourly cost) − annual running cost
Payback in months
Build cost ÷ (net annual saving ÷ 12)
Hours saved are valued at your loaded hourly cost. That is real money only if the time is redeployed or headcount genuinely changes — if the hours simply disappear into the day, treat the figure as capacity released rather than cash saved, and say so when you present it.
The build and running cost fields are deliberately blank of any benchmark. They are your figures, or a quote. The defaults reflect the range of focused finance builds we have delivered, not a published industry average, and we'd rather label that plainly than dress it up as research.
The automatable share is where most ROI cases go wrong. Published AP benchmarks are a useful sanity check on how high it can realistically go: best-in-class functions process more than 1.8 times as many invoices straight through as everyone else, not ten times as many.
Where the benchmark numbers come from
Best-in-class organisations process more than 1.8 times as many invoices in a straight-through manner, at costs 79% below average — a realistic ceiling for how far an automatable share can move in one step.
Ardent Partners, The State of ePayables 2025: AP's Unfinished JourneyFor working-capital processes specifically, the value of released time sits alongside the cash effect: $1.7 trillion remains trapped in excess working capital, 35% of gross working capital and 11% of aggregate revenue.
The Hackett Group 2025 Working Capital Survey, 18/08/2025Build cost and running cost defaults are FinTask's own range for a focused finance build, stated as such. They are not a third-party benchmark and should be replaced with a real quote.
FinTask — book 30 minutes for a scoped figure
Get a real build cost instead of a default
Thirty minutes on the actual process — what it touches, where the data lives, what has to stay manual — and you'll have a scoped figure to put in the box instead of an estimate.
Other free calculators
Key takeaway
Automation payback is the one-off build cost divided by the monthly net saving, where the net saving is hours saved a year valued at loaded hourly cost, less annual running cost. The number that decides the case is the automatable share, not the build price.
The three numbers that decide the case
The automatable share. Set it honestly and the rest of the model behaves. Set it at 95% because the process "looks simple" and you will be explaining a missed payback in eighteen months. Exceptions are not a rounding error; they are the part that stays manual.
The running cost. Hosting, licences, AI usage and someone to look after it. A build with no running cost line is a build nobody has costed properly.
What happens to the hours. Time saved is worth what you do with it. Redeployed to collections or analysis, it is value. Absorbed silently into the working day, it is capacity — still worth having, but a different claim.
If the process is receivables or payables specifically, the DSO calculator and the AP cost-per-invoice calculator give a sharper answer, because both work off published benchmarks for those processes rather than generic hours.
Questions people ask
How do you calculate automation ROI?
Multiply the hours a week the process takes by 52 and by the share that can be automated to get hours saved a year. Value those at the fully loaded hourly cost, subtract the annual running cost, and divide the one-off build cost by the resulting monthly saving to get payback in months.
What is a good payback period for finance automation?
Under twelve months is a straightforward case, and focused builds on an existing ERP often land well inside that because there is no new system to buy. Anything past two years usually means the process is too small, too varied, or the automatable share has been set optimistically.
How do I know what share of a process can be automated?
The repeatable majority automates and the judgement calls do not. Published accounts payable benchmarks are a useful ceiling check: best-in-class functions process more than 1.8 times as many invoices straight through as everyone else, so a step change is realistic but a tenfold jump is not.
Are the saved hours real money?
Only if the time is redeployed or headcount genuinely changes. If neither happens, present the result as capacity released rather than cash saved. Being straight about that distinction is what makes the rest of the business case credible.
Where do the default build and running costs come from?
They reflect the range of focused finance builds we have delivered, and we label them as ours rather than dressing them up as an industry benchmark. Replace them with a real quote before the number goes anywhere near a board pack.
Is this calculator gated?
No. It loads with a worked example, every field is editable, and nothing you type is stored or sent anywhere. The booking link is optional.