What is manual work costing your company?
Your staff, your hours, your pay: see what a repetitive task costs each month and each year, and when a system would pay for itself.
This manual work cost calculator turns numbers you already know (the staff on a repetitive task, their hours a week and their pay) into what the task costs your company each month and each year. Add a quote for a system and it shows the payback in months and the 3-year saving. Nothing you enter is stored.
Why repetitive work costs more than it looks
Repetitive work rarely shows up as a line in the budget.
It sits inside salaries: re-keying leads, reminder calls, reports built by hand. And it grows with volume.
A built system costs more at the start than a subscription, then stops costing you staff hours every month. Whether that pays off depends on your numbers, so the calculator uses only what you enter.
How the calculator works it out
- Hours lost a month = staff × hours a week on the task × 52 ÷ 12. A year is staff × hours a week × 52.
- Cost a month = staff × monthly salary × (1 + employer on-costs ÷ 100) × (hours on the task ÷ contracted hours). A year is that × 12.
- Payback = system cost ÷ (cost a month − running cost a month), in months. The saving over 3 years is that monthly saving × 36, minus the system cost.
Every figure comes from the fields above, and a month is 52 weeks ÷ 12. Enter only the hours the system would take off your team.
Common tasks to automate by industry
| Industry | Manual task | The system that removes it |
|---|---|---|
| Dental groups | Appointment confirmations and reminders sent one by one | WhatsApp reminders linked to the booking system |
| Aesthetic clinics | No-show chasing and rescheduling by phone | Automatic reminders with a rebooking link |
| Hospital groups | Medical reports, passports and insurance documents collected by email | Secure upload portal with checklist reminders |
| Property developers | Assigning leads to sales agents and checking that they followed up | CRM with round-robin assignment and follow-up alerts |
| Interior design firms | Quotation and BOQ versions tracked in spreadsheets | CRM with a quotation tracker |
| Education groups | Enquiry, application and enrolment tracked across spreadsheets | Admissions pipeline in a CRM |
| Financial services | Documents and KYC items chased by email and phone | Workflow with a secure upload and checklist reminders |
| Lending | Payslips and bank statements collected over chat | Structured document upload with checklist reminders |
| F&B groups | Outlet sales and stock figures compiled by hand each day | Automated daily outlet report inside the workflow |
| E-commerce brands | Orders and stock synced by hand across marketplaces and the own store | Order and stock sync workflow |
| Travel and hotels | Deposit and balance payment reminders sent by hand | Automatic payment reminders |
| B2B companies | Web-form leads forwarded to sales by email | CRM with automatic lead routing |
Keep exploring
Frequently asked questions
What does the manual work cost calculator count?
It counts the staff time a repetitive task takes and what that time costs you, from your own headcount, hours and pay. It leaves out errors, delays and slow replies, which also cost money but are harder to measure.
Why do employer on-costs start at 0?
The calculator only pre-fills figures it can cite, and it does not guess your payroll. Add your employer share of EPF, SOCSO and EIS and any allowances as a % of salary to get the full cost of an hour.
What should I enter as the system cost?
A quote you have for a build that takes the task off your team, and its monthly running cost. We put no price in the calculator, because a build is scoped and quoted for each company.
How do I find the real hours a task takes?
Ask the people who do it to log the task for two normal weeks, including the follow-ups and corrections. Estimates from memory tend to miss the small steps.
Is anything I type stored?
No. The calculation runs in your browser, and nothing you enter is sent or saved.
Cite this calculator
- Cite this
- shakalakaa (Plixitt Solutions). “Manual Work Cost Calculator.”
- https://shakalakaa.my/tools/manual-work-cost-calculator · Updated 2026-11-12
- Licensed under CC BY 4.0.
shakalakaa (Plixitt Solutions). "Manual Work Cost Calculator." https://shakalakaa.my/tools/manual-work-cost-calculator. Updated 2026-11-12. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.