Automation ROI calculator
Any finance process, any stack. Tell us the hours it takes and how quickly you want automation to pay for itself, and see the budget you can spend on it — plus what you keep every year after.
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.
How quickly you want the automation to pay for itself. A longer target gives you more to spend.
Your automation budget
€13,978
What you can spend and still pay it back in 12 months
Saved every year after payback
€13,978
437 hours a year (8.4 a week) back in the team
How this is calculated
Hours saved per year
Hours per week × 52 × automatable %
Saving per year
Hours saved per year × loaded hourly cost
Automation budget
(Saving per year ÷ 12) × payback target in months
The budget is the most you could spend on the automation and still have it pay for itself within your target. Spend less and it pays back sooner; after that, the yearly saving is yours to keep.
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 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, 18/08/2025
Find out what it would actually cost
Thirty minutes on the actual process — what it touches, where the data lives, what has to stay manual — and you'll have a scoped quote to hold against your €13,978 budget.
Other free calculators
Key takeaway
Your automation budget is the yearly saving divided by twelve and multiplied by the months you want it to pay back in, where the yearly saving is hours saved a year valued at loaded hourly cost. The number that decides the case is the automatable share.
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 payback target. How long you are prepared to wait for the automation to pay for itself. Twelve months is an easy case to make; a longer target buys a bigger budget but asks the business to wait longer for the return.
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, then value those at the fully loaded hourly cost to get the yearly saving. Divide that by twelve and multiply by the number of months you want the automation to pay back in. The result is the most you can spend and still hit that target.
I don't know what an automation build costs. Can I still use this?
Yes, that is the point of it. Instead of asking you for a build cost, the calculator asks how quickly you want the automation to pay for itself and tells you the budget that target allows. Book a call with that figure and we will tell you whether the process can be automated inside it.
What payback target should I choose?
Twelve months is a sensible starting point and an easy case to make internally. Focused builds on an existing ERP often pay back well inside a year because there is no new system to buy. Stretching the target past two years gives you a bigger budget, but it usually means the process is small or varied enough to question first.
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.
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 quote button and booking link are optional.