What do repetitive tasks really cost your business? The five-minute calculation
The most expensive task in your company may be the one that only takes ten minutes.
Ten minutes, three times a day, for two people: more than 200 hours a year. Those hours appear on no line of the P&L; they dissolve into everyone's working day. Put a figure on one of your company's tasks in five minutes, then decide what is worth automating.
7 min read
Contents
A repetitive task costs almost nothing once. Its cost comes from repetition: the same data entry, the same check, the same follow-up, done every day by several people. For a business leader, the real question is not "does it take long?" but "what does it cost us each year, and what would we do with that time?". The calculator below answers it with your own figures.
Calculator
Your task, in figures
Time for one run, start to finish
Gross salary plus employer contributions, divided by hours worked
Cost per year
€6,600
Time per year
220 h
31 seven-hour days
14% of a full-time post
The calculation
10 min × 3 × 220 days × 2 ppl = 220 h
220 h × 30 €/h = €6,600
Basis: 220 days, 44 weeks or 11 months worked a year. Full time: 1,607 hours a year, the French legal year.
01The calculation, plainly
Four values only you know: how long the task takes, how often it comes back, how many people do it, and their fully loaded hourly cost. The calculator turns them into a working year.
- 1
Hours per year
Minutes per task × times × working periods per year × people, divided by 60.
- 2
Cost per year
Hours per year × fully loaded hourly cost: what an hour costs the company, employer contributions included, not take-home pay.
| Parameter | Value used | Adjust to |
|---|---|---|
| Working days per year | 220 | Your working hours and collective agreement |
| Working weeks per year | 44 | If the task comes back every week |
| Working months per year | 11 | If the task comes back every month |
| Fully loaded hourly cost | €30 by default | Annual employer cost ÷ hours actually worked |
02The four places where time disappears fastest
Repetitive hours pile up wherever information arrives on one side and has to be copied across to the other. In a service, distribution or manufacturing SME, four areas come up again and again.
Handling quote requests
Requests arrive by email, web form or phone, each in a different shape. Someone reads them, retypes them, looks the customer up, prepares the quote. Automation reads the request, creates or finds the customer, pre-fills the quote and routes it to the right salesperson: what remains is the decision, the price and the relationship.
Orders received by email
A PDF purchase order, retyped line by line into the business system: the textbook repetitive task. Stable rules, data already digital, high volume. The order can be read, checked and entered automatically, with a human sign-off only on unusual cases.
Stock monitoring and replenishment
Comparing quantities, spotting what falls below threshold, preparing the supplier order: these checks are often done by hand, in a spreadsheet, once a week. Automated, they run every day, and the alert arrives before the stock-out rather than after it.
Scattered data and reporting
Revenue in one tool, orders in another, follow-ups in a spreadsheet: every week someone exports, copies and formats the same report. Connecting these sources gives you a dashboard that updates itself, and data you can finally make decisions on.
03A worked example
Take orders received by email. The values below are illustrative assumptions, not a measurement: enter your own in the calculator.
| Item | Assumption | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Time per order | 6 minutes | |
| Volume | 25 orders a day, 220 days | 5,500 orders a year |
| People | 1 | |
| Total time | 6 × 25 × 220 ÷ 60 | 550 hours a year |
| Fully loaded hourly cost | €35 | |
| Annual cost | 550 × 35 | €19,250 a year |
550 hours is about a third of a full-time role spent copying information that already exists in digital form. A distributor we worked with automated the receipt of its orders, their entry into its business system and its stock checks: it saves €1,000 a month (3plus case study, saving reported by the client).
04What this figure does not tell you
The result measures a time cost. Before comparing it with a quote, adjust it in both directions.
- It understates the time spent fixing entry errors, chasing missing information, and the delay your customer absorbs while their request waits its turn.
- It overstates the cash saving: freed-up time does not leave the payroll, it goes to other work. The real value depends on what the team does with those hours.
- It leaves out the cost of automation itself: set-up, maintenance, and human review of special cases.
05Automate or not: four questions
- 1
Does the task always follow the same rules?
The more predictable the cases, the simpler and more reliable the automation. Many exceptions call for human review.
- 2
Is the input data digital?
Emails, files, software: automatable. Paper or phone calls: one extra step is needed.
- 3
Will the volume grow?
A task that grows with the business will cost more next year. That is where automation pays back most.
- 4
Is an error expensive?
A wrong price, quantity or stock level is paid for twice: in correction time and in customer trust.
06How we work
We start from your tools: your email, your business system, your files. We build the connections between them rather than adding yet another piece of software; a bespoke tool only if you want one. Everything we deliver is yours: the code, the connections, the data and the documentation. You stay free to develop it further with us, in-house or with another provider.
Before you talk to a provider
- Time the task five times, on different cases.
- Count how often it comes back in a normal week.
- List the software and files involved, from the moment the information arrives to the final result.
- List the exceptions: whatever forces someone to stop or ask a colleague.
- Estimate what an error costs, in time and money.
Frequently asked questions
How do you calculate the cost of a repetitive task?
Multiply the task’s duration by the number of times it comes back in a year and by the number of people who do it: that gives hours per year. Then multiply those hours by the fully loaded hourly cost. Example: 10 minutes, 3 times a day, 2 people, 220 working days comes to 220 hours a year, or €6,600 a year at €30 an hour.
How do you calculate an employee’s fully loaded hourly cost?
Divide the position’s annual cost to the employer (gross salary plus employer contributions) by the hours actually worked in the year, about 1,607 hours for a full-time job in France (in French). A position that costs the company €50,000 a year therefore comes to about €31 an hour. Reasoning on take-home pay markedly understates what a task really costs.
What is the average hourly labour cost in France?
In 2025, an hour of work cost on average €44.7 in French market-sector companies with 10 or more employees, according to INSEE (in French). That cost includes wages and employer social contributions. The €30 default in the calculator is deliberately cautious: the most accurate figure is the cost of your own positions.
How many hours a year does a full-time employee work in France?
The statutory full-time working year in France is 1,607 hours (in French), which matches the 35-hour week. The calculator works in periods: it assumes 220 days, 44 weeks or 11 months worked a year, values to adjust to your own hours and collective agreement.
Is a two-minute task worth automating?
Yes, if it comes back often. Two minutes, fifty times a day, over 220 working days adds up to more than 360 hours a year for a single person, or more than €10,000 at €30 an hour. Frequency, far more than duration, is what makes a repetitive task expensive.
Which tasks should a small business automate first?
The ones that meet three conditions: stable rules, data that is already digital, and high volume. In small and mid-sized companies, four areas come up again and again: incoming quote requests, keying in orders received by email, stock and reorder checks, and reports built by hand from several tools. Start with the task that has the highest annual cost.
How do you know whether an automation pays off?
Compare the task’s annual cost with the automation’s total cost: setup, any subscriptions, maintenance and the human checking that remains. The payback period is the setup cost divided by the net annual saving (the task’s cost minus recurring fees). If setup costs half of that saving, it pays for itself in six months. Errors avoided come on top.
How do you put a figure on the time a business owner spends on repetitive tasks?
Use their fully loaded hourly cost, as for an employee, then ask the question that matters most: what that time would bring in elsewhere. An hour of the owner’s time spent copying data is an hour taken away from customers, business development or hiring. That is often where the task costs most.
Who owns an automation built by a contractor?
It depends on the contract: check that it includes handing over the code, the access and the documentation, and that the automation runs on your own accounts. With B&Y Beyond, everything delivered is yours: the code, the connections, the data and the documentation. You stay free to develop it with us, in-house or with another provider.
Sources
- INSEE, Hourly labour cost in the European Union, 2025 annual data (published 18/09/2026, in French)
- French Ministry of Labour, Part-time work (statutory annual working time of 1,607 hours, in French)
- B&Y Beyond, case studies (saving reported by the client)
Analysis by B&Y Beyond, an independent third party. Raw data on request.
Written by Maleaume B.
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