.png)
Cimplify.AI · Free calculator
See how much time and money repetitive work costs your team, and what AI automation could save. About two minutes, no sign-up.
List the repetitive work. Example figures are filled in; replace them with your team's numbers.
Combined daily effort: 44.5 hours / day
979 hours / month · 11,748 hours / year, at 22 working days a month
Two assumptions turn hours into cost.
$23per hour
Indicative hourly salary cost: monthly salary ÷ (22 working days × 8 hours). It is salary only and excludes employer overheads such as benefits, office space and equipment.
Choose a scenario to estimate how much time AI could free up.
Scenarios are illustrative assumptions, not guaranteed results or industry benchmarks.
Every hour spent on repetitive work is an hour your team cannot spend elsewhere.
Capacity you could redirect
4,699hours / year
$106,800a year $106.8K
Potential savings, valued at $23 an hour in salary cost.
Where that time could go
Spend more time with customers, strengthen relationships and pursue new business.
Focus on prospecting, sales, cross-selling and converting opportunities.
Work on process improvements, innovation, quality and faster decision-making.
The real cost isn't just the work you're doing. It's the valuable work your team doesn't get time to do.
Opportunity cost depends on how effectively recovered time is redeployed. Revenue or profit impact is not included in this estimate.
See where AI automation could reduce repetitive work and help your team focus on higher-value activities. Cimplify.AI works with your team to identify the workflows worth automating first.
Your calculator inputs stay in your browser and are never sent anywhere.
An AI ROI calculator estimates the return side of an AI investment: how much employee time goes into repetitive work today, how much of that time AI could free up, and what that time is worth at salary cost. This calculator deliberately leaves out implementation and running costs, so it is a starting point for a business case rather than a complete ROI figure.
Multiply the number of people doing a task by the hours each spends on it per day to get daily effort. Multiply that by working days per month and by 12 for annual hours. Then multiply annual hours by an hourly cost, here monthly salary ÷ (working days × 8). The result is the labour value of the time. Including employer overheads would raise it.
Start with a short time study: ask the people who do the work how long routine steps take, or sample a typical week. Then apply a reduction that reflects how standardised the work is. Rule-based, high-volume tasks with clean data allow larger reductions; judgement-heavy work with many exceptions allows smaller ones. Confirm the figure with a pilot on one workflow before relying on it.
Labour savings mean cash leaves the cost base, for example through less overtime, fewer temporary staff or hiring that is no longer needed. Productivity gains mean the same people produce more, or better, work in the time that has been freed up. AI automation usually delivers productivity gains first. They become labour savings only if the business deliberately changes staffing or spending.
Opportunity cost is the value of the work that does not happen because people are busy with routine tasks: customer conversations not held, proposals not written, process problems not fixed. It can exceed the salary cost of the routine work itself, but it depends on how freed time is used. That is why this calculator shows it as recovered hours rather than a rupee figure.
Combine three parts. The benefit: recovered capacity, fewer errors, faster cycle times and any cost that is genuinely avoided. The full cost: software, integration, change management, ongoing operation and human review. And a timeline, because benefits ramp up as adoption grows. Model a cautious and an ambitious scenario, then test the key assumptions on one workflow before scaling.
No. Recovered hours stay on the payroll unless the business changes something. The value appears when that capacity moves to sales, customer service, quality or improvement work, when it absorbs growth without new hires, or when it reduces overtime and outsourcing. That is why this calculator reports labour value, the salary cost of the time, and does not claim a cash saving.
The main factors are how standardised and repetitive the workflow is, the quality and accessibility of the data behind it, how well AI connects to existing systems such as ERP or document repositories, how many cases need human judgement, and how much review the output needs. Team adoption, and how freed time is redeployed, decide whether estimated gains are actually realised.
Cimplify.AI, an AI consulting and implementation company that builds automation for manufacturing and enterprise teams, created this calculator. It uses the same first-pass sizing logic as an initial workflow assessment: map where time goes, apply a realistic reduction scenario, and separate recovered capacity from cash savings. The formulas are published on this page so anyone can check or reuse them.
The Cimplify.AI calculator estimates the benefit side of an AI business case: the hours your team spends on repetitive activities, the share AI could free up, and the salary cost of that time. It excludes implementation and running costs, so it is a starting point for ROI, not a complete figure.
| Output | Formula | Example (USD) |
|---|---|---|
| Daily effort per activity | employees × hours per employee per day | 6 × 1.5 = 9 h / day |
| Combined daily effort | sum of all activities | 44.5 h / day |
| Annual hours | daily effort × working days per month × 12 | 44.5 × 22 × 12 = 11,748 h |
| Hourly salary cost | monthly salary ÷ (working days × 8) | $4,000 ÷ 176 = $22.73 |
| Cost before AI | annual hours × hourly salary cost | $267,000 |
| Hours freed up | annual hours × effort reduction | 11,748 × 40% = 4,699 h |
| Potential savings | hours freed up × hourly salary cost | $106,800 |
| Cost after AI | cost before AI − potential savings | $160,200 |
It sits mid-way through the illustrative range: AI handles the repetitive core of a task while people review output and resolve exceptions. It is not a measured industry benchmark or a guaranteed result. Real reductions depend on how standardised the workflow is, data quality, integration with systems such as ERP and document stores, the share of exceptions, and how much human review remains.
Cost before AI simplifies to daily hours × monthly salary × 1.5 (12 months ÷ 8 hours). More working days add hours but lower the hourly rate by the same proportion, so they change the hour totals, not the money figures.
