Automation ROI — the maintenance-honest version
Most automation ROI calculators show you the savings and hide the costs. This worksheet includes the rows they omit: one-time build cost, monthly maintenance, and the exception rate that never quite reaches zero.
What it takes in
Six inputs. Three of them are the rows vendor calculators leave out.
Hours per week on the task
How much time the workflow consumes today, across everyone who touches it.
Loaded hourly cost
Salary plus overhead for the people doing the work — not just base pay.
One-time build cost
Usually omittedWhat it costs to design, build, and deploy the automation. The row most calculators skip.
Monthly maintenance cost
Usually omittedAPI fees, hosting, monitoring, and the human time spent keeping it running.
Exception and rework rate
Usually omittedThe share of runs that still need a human to review, fix, or redo. It is never zero.
Automation coverage
The share of the task the automation actually handles — modeled at 40, 60, and 80 percent.
Four outputs, all net of costs.
Every output subtracts maintenance and exception handling before claiming a benefit. If the automation does not pay for itself, the worksheet will say so — that is the point.
Net monthly benefit
Hours recovered, priced at loaded cost, minus maintenance and exception handling.
Break-even month
When cumulative net benefit crosses the one-time build cost.
First-year net
Twelve months of net benefit, with the build cost subtracted.
Three-year net
The longer view — where maintenance costs either compound or stay contained.
Modeled at 40, 60, and 80% coverage — because 100% is a sales slide.
No automation handles every case. The worksheet computes all four outputs at three coverage levels side by side, so you can see how the numbers move when reality lands somewhere between optimistic and conservative.
Conservative — the automation handles the routine core, humans keep the rest.
Middle case — most runs go through, exceptions still route to a person.
Strong case — worth modeling, worth being skeptical of on day one.
The worksheet has a column for typical ranges, and it is deliberately blank. We don't publish numbers we didn't measure, and we haven't measured your workflow. Fill it with your own figures — the math is only as honest as the inputs.
Every formula is visible and editable. Nothing is hidden in a locked cell.Get the ROI worksheet
Request the worksheet and we'll send the xlsx to your inbox.
Want these numbers pressure-tested against your actual workflow?
Bring the completed worksheet to a fit review. We'll walk through your inputs — where the coverage estimate is optimistic, where the maintenance line is missing something, and whether the break-even month survives contact with your real process.
