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Is this worth automating?
Four numbers decide whether automating a task pays for itself: how long it takes, how often it happens, how many people do it, and how long the automation would take to build. This works the answer out in hours, and it will tell you when the answer is no. Nothing is sent anywhere — the arithmetic runs in your browser.
How is break-even calculated?
Minutes × times a week × people, ÷ 60, gives the hours a week the task costs now. Multiply by 52 for the year. Then build hours ÷ hours saved a week gives the number of weeks before the automation has paid for itself. Six minutes, forty times a week, one person is four hours a week — so a twenty-four hour build pays back in six weeks.
When is the answer no?
When payback runs past a year. A task that takes an hour but happens once a quarter costs four hours a year, and no build worth doing pays that back. The tasks worth automating are almost always the small frequent ones nobody has noticed, not the big annual one everybody complains about.
What does this deliberately leave out?
Money, because a rate turns a calculation into a quote. Maintenance, because it varies more than any average would admit. And the errors the manual version makes — which are real, and usually push the case for automating further than this arithmetic does. Treat the result as the pessimistic end.
Where do the build hours come from?
If you have no estimate, the bands worth starting from are the ones we work to: about two weeks for a landing page, three to four for an AI assistant, six to ten for a full product build. Smaller automation sits below all three.