Free tool

Time Savings Calculator: Value Time Saved by Automation

Seed Light built this free time savings calculator so you can see how many hours repeat tasks take from your team each year, counted in hours and working days, never money.

List the small jobs your team repeats, and see how much of the year they quietly take.

The jobs your team repeats

How many repeat tasks you are counting

Small jobs done the same way every time.

How long one of them takes on average

Include the stopping and starting around it.

How many times each one is done a week

Per person, not across the whole team.

How many people do them

Everyone with these jobs in their week.

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
Count one person's week
Tasks multiplied by minutes each, multiplied by how often each one is done. That is the minutes one person loses a week.
02
Count the whole team
Multiply by the number of people doing them. Small jobs feel small because each person only sees their own share.
03
Turn the minutes into a year
Divide by sixty for hours, then multiply by fifty two weeks. Fifty two is an assumption of a full year at that pace. For seasonal work, reduce the inputs so they describe an average week across the whole year rather than a busy one.
04
Say it in days
Divide the yearly hours by eight. Working days are easier to picture than hours, and harder to wave away.

A worked example

A three person office repeats six small jobs. Each takes ten minutes and each is done five times a week by every one of them, at that pace all year. Example only. Replace these assumptions with your own numbers.

Repeat tasks counted: 6
Minutes each: 10
Times a week: 5
People doing them: 3
Hours a week for the team: 15 hours
Hours a year, at 52 weeks: 780 hours
Working days a year: About 97 days

See how we build automations

Straight answers

Common questions

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

Saved hours do not turn into money by themselves. The time has financial value only when somebody decides how to use it, such as putting that capacity into work that wins customers. Without a productive use for the released time, the calculator's hours remain time rather than cash.

Because putting an hourly cost on the front turns a straight question about your week into an argument about wages, and owners then spend their attention on the wrong number.

A repeat task is work done in the same way each time without requiring real judgement. Examples include copying figures between two systems, sending the same message with a changed name and renaming files or records through the same set of steps.

Enter the average weekly pace across the full year, or calculate busy and quiet periods separately. Using a peak week for all 52 weeks will overstate the saving.

Small interruptions around a task should be included in the time count. Those interruptions can make the first total look larger than expected, so review the estimate against the way the task currently runs and replace assumptions with observed time where possible.

Sort the tasks by estimated hours per year, then inspect the top three. Start with the task that has clear steps, consistent inputs and few exceptions. Test one small change on real work before using the estimate to plan a wider automation.

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