Nobody puts "copying numbers from one system into another" in a job description. It happens anyway. A form arrives, someone retypes it into the CRM. A report is due, someone pulls figures from three tools into a spreadsheet. It takes "about an hour," every week, forever.

That hour has a price. Here is how to work it out for your own firm, and how to decide whether it's worth fixing.

What's the formula?

Four numbers, multiplied:

Hours each run × people involved × runs per year × loaded hourly cost = annual cost

  • Hours each run: time from starting the task to finishing it, including the back-and-forth when something doesn't match.
  • People involved: everyone who touches it, including the person who checks it.
  • Runs per year: 52 for weekly, 12 for monthly, about 250 for daily.
  • Loaded hourly cost: salary plus taxes and benefits, divided by working hours. If you don't know it, a rough rule is salary divided by 2,080, then add about a quarter on top. Use your own numbers whenever you have them.

What does that look like in practice?

Here is an illustrative example. The firm is made up, but the pattern is common.

Picture a 12-person professional services firm. Every Monday, two account managers pull deal numbers from HubSpot and hours from the time tracker into a Google Sheet. Then they rewrite the result as a client email. It takes about three hours.

  • 3 hours × 2 people × 52 weeks × $65 an hour = $20,280 a year

That's one workflow. Most firms have three or four like it.

What costs don't show up on a timesheet?

The formula only counts hours. The bigger costs are often the ones nobody logs:

  • Errors. A transposed number in a client report or an invoice doesn't cost three hours. It costs a correction, an apology, and some trust.
  • Delay. If a new inquiry waits until Thursday to be entered, the prospect may have hired someone else by Wednesday.
  • The one person who knows how. When the process lives in one employee's head, a vacation turns a routine task into a scramble. So does a resignation.
  • The work it crowds out. Those three hours on Monday could have gone to client calls or business development.
  • Double work. When people stop trusting a half-fixed process, they do it the new way and then check it the old way.

These are hard to put a number on, so don't invent one. List them next to the hours figure when you decide.

How do you decide if it's worth automating?

Compare the annual cost to the cost of fixing it once, then ask three questions:

  1. Does it follow the same steps most of the time? Repetitive, rules-based work automates well. Work that needs judgment at every step does not.
  2. Is the data clean enough? If the source systems are full of duplicates, cleanup comes first.
  3. Where does a person need to stay involved? Client-facing, financial, and legal output should keep a human review step, even when the drafting is automated.

For the example above: a workflow automation sprint at launch pricing costs $3,500 to $8,000 and takes 4 to 6 weeks. Against $20,280 a year in hours alone, the math works within the first year. That holds as long as the process is repetitive and the data is usable. If either answer is no, it may not be worth it yet. Raquel will say so.

Where does this come from?

Raquel spent close to 20 years in in-house analytics roles, and a lot of that time went into exactly this kind of work. In one role she automated the weekly reporting workflows and cut the manual effort by 60%. The lesson that carried over: measure the before number first, or nobody will believe the after number.

How do you work out your own number?

Use the workflow cost calculator with your own hours, people, and rates. Or describe the workflow in the free workflow diagnostic. Raquel prices it out by hand, and you get a one-page scored read within two business days.