Free tool

Manual Work Cost Calculator: Price Repetitive Admin

Seed Light built this free manual work cost calculator to price the work your team still does by hand each week. It includes the cost of putting mistakes right, which owners rarely count.

Enter who does the work and how long fixing errors takes, and see the yearly bill for it.

The work you do by hand

How many people do this work

Anyone who touches it, even for part of their week.

Hours each of them spends on it a week

An honest average beats a hopeful one.

What an hour of that person costs you

Pay plus the extras you carry on top of pay.

How many hours are spent fixing errors each week

Average time spent correcting, checking or repeating the work, across everyone. Count these on top of the hours above, never inside them.

Extra cost caused by errors each month, outside wages

Refunds, reshipping, wasted materials. Leave it at zero if the labour figure above already covers it.

Your result

Enter your numbers and your result will appear here. The calculation runs in your browser.

Talk through your result

Book a free 15-minute call and we will help you read the numbers and decide what is worth improving first.

We record the result band you reach, not the numbers you enter.

Free to use, with no sign up. The calculation runs in your browser, so the values you enter are not sent to our server or stored.

The maths

How this calculator works

01
Add up the hours you already pay for
People multiplied by hours each a week. That is the weekly load, and it is the number owners guess lowest on.
02
Turn the hours into a year
Weekly hours multiplied by fifty two, then multiplied by what an hour costs. That is the plain labour bill.
03
Count the hours spent putting work right
You measure those hours yourself, so nothing is inferred. They are annualised the same way and priced at the same hourly cost, on top of the labour bill rather than inside it.
04
Add any cost that is not wages
Refunds, reshipping and wasted materials are added as a monthly figure, twelve times over. Leave it at zero if those are already inside the hours you entered, so nothing is counted twice.

A worked example

A parts supplier has three people keying orders for six hours a week each. Between them they spend another three hours a week correcting and rechecking that work, and errors cost a further 25 units a month in reshipping. Money is shown in units so the shape stays clear. Example only. Replace these assumptions with your own numbers.

Hours a week on the work: 18 hours
Hours a year: 936 hours
Cost of an hour: 1 unit
The work itself: 936 units a year
Hours a week fixing errors: 3 hours
Rework hours a year: 156 hours, so 156 units
Error cost outside wages: 25 units a month, so 300 units
Total a year: 1,392 units

See how we build automations

Straight answers

Common questions

Common questions about the calculation and how to use the result.

Rework is separated because normal processing and correcting mistakes use different amounts of time. Recording both shows whether the larger cost comes from doing the task itself or fixing errors after it has already been completed once.

Take what the person is paid, then add what you carry on top, which usually means employer contributions, tools, a desk and the share of management time they need.

Usually no. The stronger case is to remove repetitive work so the same people can spend more time serving customers, checking quality or solving exceptions.

The clearest way to measure time spent fixing errors is to watch one normal week rather than trying to remember a year. Ask each person who touches the work to record the time spent chasing missing information or redoing a task, then use those notes for the estimate.

Compare the recurring cost of the manual work with the cost and upkeep of a fix. Also consider errors, delays and work that only a person can handle.

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