ROI estimator
What is that manual process actually costing you?
Hi, I’m Ewan. Pick the most repetitive job in your business - quoting, invoicing, compliance paperwork, data entry - and put your own numbers in. You’ll see what it costs a year and how fast automating it would pay for itself. No signup, and no magic numbers: if the payback looks bad, the tool says so.
- · Your hours, your wages, your call on coverage
- · Compared against real fixed prices, not “contact us”
- · Every figure is an estimate and labelled as one
$55/hr is a typical loaded cost for AU small-business admin work.
Capped at 85% - full automation is rare, and honest numbers convert better than magic ones.
Compare against
Automating this would give you back about ~5.6 hours a week.
At $55/hour that is ~$14,784 a year. Against the AI Quick Wins Sprint (from $9,900) it pays for itself in ~8.0 months, with a first-year return of ~49%.
Estimate only - real numbers come from the audit. Assumes 48 working weeks a year and that saved hours are genuinely redeployed.
How your numbers compare
Benchmarks, clearly labelled.
Across published small-business AI build data, the median result is roughly ~4 months to payback, ~12 hours a week recovered and a first-year return around ~340%. Those are industry benchmarks, not a promise - the estimate above uses your numbers, and yours are the ones that matter.
Closer to home: a recent Brisbane client got ~140 hours a year of admin time back by automating their compliance paperwork. Read the case study →
Assumptions this estimator makes
- · 48 working weeks a year (leave and holidays are real)
- · Loaded hourly cost includes wages plus on-costs like super
- · Automation coverage caps at 85% - full automation is rare
- · Saved hours only count if they are genuinely redeployed
- · Estimates only - the audit produces the real numbers
Common questions
The maths, answered straight.
How does the estimator work out the savings?
Hours per week, times the number of people, times how much of the work automation can realistically cover, times your loaded hourly cost, over 48 working weeks. Simple on purpose - the point is a sanity check with your own numbers, not a forecast.
Why does automation coverage cap at 85%?
Because full automation is rare and pretending otherwise produces magic numbers. Most processes keep a human on judgement calls, exceptions and anything with legal weight - that remaining slice is a feature, not a failure.
Why 48 working weeks instead of 52?
Leave, public holidays and the quiet weeks around Christmas are real. Using 48 keeps the annual figure honest rather than inflating it by an extra month of work nobody does.
What does the AI Readiness Audit add on top of this?
This page estimates one process from your own inputs. The audit looks at how your business actually runs, finds and ranks every automatable process, and gives you a costed roadmap - so you start with the best-value one, not just the first one that came to mind.
Fixed-price pack
AI Readiness Audit
Find what AI can take off your plate - safely.
Half-day review + a roadmap you can action
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Want the real numbers, not estimates?
The AI Readiness Audit maps your actual processes and hands you a costed roadmap - what to automate first, and what to leave alone.