The Manual Work Cost Calculator
What is the manual work actually costing you?
Put in the roles that spend real time on processing work. Every assumption underneath is yours to change, and every one says where it came from.
Processing work, per year
$66,700
1,398 hours across 2 people, at 1.150x salary.
Even on the lower assumption · 20%
$13,340
280 hours back, about 0.2 full-time roles worth of time.
If the upper trial results hold · 35%
$23,345
489 hours back, about 0.3 full-time roles worth of time.
Roles
$65,000 to $80,000 · Seek Career Advice, retrieved 13 August 2026
On-costs · 1.150x
Salary is not the cost of employing somebody. This adds the on-costs that sit on top of it. Every component below is itemised and editable, because no published source states a single blended figure.
The components you have ticked come to 1.136x. We hold the figure at 1.15x, the bottom of the published range, to allow for the smaller overheads not itemised here.
What this kind of work costs in the Australian market
Not a quote, and not our pricing. These are the ranges Australian providers publish, set against the figure you just built, so you can see what a project would need to be worth to you.
Workflow audit or strategy
$1,000 to $10,000Someone maps the work, costs it, and tells you what is worth automating before anything is built.
0.8 to 7.8 weeks of what this work already costs you.
Entry automation, a single workflow
$2,000 to $5,000One process automated end to end, using tools that already talk to each other.
1.6 to 3.9 weeks of what this work already costs you.
Single workflow with custom integration
$5,000 to $20,000One process, but something in your stack needs building into rather than plugging into.
3.9 to 15.6 weeks of what this work already costs you.
Multi-process build
$8,000 to $25,000Several connected workflows, delivered as one piece of work.
6.2 to 19.5 weeks of what this work already costs you.
Custom AI systems
$35,000 and upBespoke systems built around your business rather than configured on top of it.
27.3+ weeks of what this work already costs you.
Ongoing support
$200 to $2,000 a monthKeeping it running, monitored and improving after it is live.
3.6% to 36% of what this work costs you each month.
Assumptions to edit
These two figures are starting assumptions, not findings. Published trials show task-level time savings in this range, but how much of your own processing workload is recoverable is a question about your business. Change both and see what happens to the number.
Noy and Zhang, Science (2023) Randomised controlled trial on professional writing tasks: assisted workers finished about 37% faster, with higher rated quality.
Microsoft Security Copilot randomised controlled trial (2024) IT administrators completed tasks about 30% faster, with accuracy improving alongside speed.
Both trials measure time saved on individual tasks, not the share of a whole role recovered over a year. The two rates above are starting assumptions, not findings.
Working time
38 hours is the standard full-time week under the National Employment Standards. 46 weeks allows for annual leave, public holidays and sick leave.
That is the cost. The 5-minute AI Fit Check tells you what to fix first.
Take the AI Fit CheckEvery assumption in this calculator, and where it comes from
Salary defaults are the midpoint of the published range for each role, from Seek Career Advice, retrieved 13 August 2026 and editable above. For work with no matching published title, the ABS puts clerical and administrative workers at $41.40 an hour. The ABS full-time-equivalent figure of about $81,700 sits at the top of Seek's administration range. The two measure different populations, so they do not contradict each other.