By the end of this page you will be able to answer, on paper, whether automating a specific process in your business is worth paying for. Four steps, your own numbers, about ten minutes.
I put my real prices in the worked examples below rather than a range, because a formula with an invented cost in it is not a formula. Every plan starts with one payment that covers the two-hour Setup and your first month: $697 with Cruise, $997 with Accelerate, $1,497 with Overdrive. After that it is $97, $397 or $897 a month. Those are the numbers I use.
One thing worth saying up front. When setup cost was measured in thousands, payback period was the interesting question. It is not anymore. At $697 the payback on almost any real process lands inside the first month, and the honest question becomes whether the monthly membership is worth what it gives back. That is the question the math below is built to answer.
The Formula
Step 1: What the manual version costs you every month.
Hours per week on the task, times the hourly cost of whoever does it (salary plus benefits divided by working hours, or your own rate if it is you), times 4.33 weeks.
Monthly Manual Cost = Hours/Week x Hourly Rate x 4.33
Step 2: What the automated version costs every month.
The membership, plus the one-time Setup spread over the first twelve months.
Year One Monthly Cost = Membership + ($697 / 12)
That works out to $155.08 a month on the $97 plan and $455.08 a month on the $397 plan. From year two the Setup drops out and it is just the membership.
Step 3: Monthly savings and return.
Monthly Savings = Monthly Manual Cost - Year One Monthly Cost
Return = (Monthly Savings / Year One Monthly Cost) x 100
Step 4: How long the Setup takes to pay back.
Payback = $697 / (Monthly Manual Cost - Membership)
Here is the floor, before any scenario. On the $97 plan, year one costs about $155 a month. If the system gives you back two and a half hours a month and your time is worth $65 an hour, that is $162 against $155. It has paid for itself. If it gives back an hour a month, it has not. That is the whole test.
Scenario 1: Lead Follow-Up
The most common problem I get called about. Leads come in and nobody responds fast enough.
The manual version
A lead fills out your form. You get a notification, maybe. You check it when you are back at your desk. You copy their details into your CRM, write a reply, set a reminder for three days out, and then actually send that follow-up when the reminder fires. Repeat for every lead.
For a business taking 20 to 40 leads a week, that runs to roughly ten hours a week once you count the reading, the typing, the writing and the chasing. Call it fifteen minutes a lead.
The numbers
- Hours per week: 10
- Who does it: owner or sales manager at $65 an hour loaded
- Monthly manual cost: 10 x $65 x 4.33 = $2,814.50
- Plan: $397 a month, because this one needs an hour of my time most months while it settles
- Setup spread over year one: $697 / 12 = $58.08
- Year one monthly cost: $397 + $58.08 = $455.08
- Monthly savings: $2,814.50 - $455.08 = $2,359.42
- Return: 519%
- Setup payback: $697 / ($2,814.50 - $397) = 0.29 months, about a week
What the formula does not capture is revenue. Responding in a minute instead of six hours wins deals you were losing without ever knowing you were in the running. I cannot put a number on that for your business and neither can anyone else, so I have left it out of the math rather than inflate it.
Scenario 2: Content and Posting
This one is personal, because I built it for my own business before I built it for anyone else.
The manual version
You write a post. You find or make an image. You reformat it for each platform. You schedule it. Four or five times a week, across two or three places. Then you watch the comments. Most owners I meet either spend eight hours a week on this or, far more often, do not do it at all.
The numbers
- Hours per week: 8
- Who does it: the owner at $75 an hour, or a marketing hire at $30
- Monthly manual cost, owner: 8 x $75 x 4.33 = $2,598.00
- Monthly manual cost, employee: 8 x $30 x 4.33 = $1,039.20
- Plan: $397 a month
- Year one monthly cost: $397 + $58.08 = $455.08
- Monthly savings against the owner doing it: $2,598.00 - $455.08 = $2,142.92 (a 471% return)
- Monthly savings against the employee doing it: $1,039.20 - $455.08 = $584.12 (a 128% return)
- Setup payback, owner: $697 / ($2,598.00 - $397) = 0.32 months, about ten days
- Setup payback, employee: $697 / ($1,039.20 - $397) = 1.09 months, about four and a half weeks
Notice the gap between those two rows. The same system is four times the return when it is your hours instead of a $30-an-hour hire's. That is true of every scenario on this page, and it is the single biggest variable in the whole calculation.
Scenario 3: Invoicing and Payment Follow-Up
The manual version
You create an invoice. You send it. You wait. Three days later you check whether it is paid. It is not. You send a nudge. A week later, a firmer one. Some clients pay on the first reminder, some take four, some need a phone call. The whole time your money is sitting in someone else's inbox.
For a business sending 40 to 60 invoices a month, the follow-up alone runs about five hours a week, before you count creating the invoices.
The numbers
- Hours per week: 5
- Who does it: office manager or bookkeeper at $25 an hour
- Monthly manual cost: 5 x $25 x 4.33 = $541.25
- Plan: $97 a month, because once this is built it needs almost nothing from me
- Year one monthly cost: $97 + $58.08 = $155.08
- Monthly savings: $541.25 - $155.08 = $386.17
- Return: 249%
- Setup payback: $697 / ($541.25 - $97) = 1.57 months, about seven weeks
This is the most modest return of the four on paper, and it is still the one I would build first for most people. The reason is cash flow rather than hours. Reminders that go out on day one, day three and day seven without fail pull payment dates forward, and money in your account earlier is worth more than the same money later.
Scenario 4: Client Onboarding
The manual version
You close a deal. Now there is a welcome email, a contract, an intake form, credentials, a kickoff invite, a note to whoever needs to know, a folder to create and a record to open in your project tool. For a service business that is two to three hours per client, spread over several days so it interrupts everything else.
At eight to ten new clients a month, that is about six hours a week.
The numbers
- Hours per week: 6
- Who does it: owner or operations manager at $55 an hour
- Monthly manual cost: 6 x $55 x 4.33 = $1,428.90
- Plan: $397 a month
- Year one monthly cost: $397 + $58.08 = $455.08
- Monthly savings: $1,428.90 - $455.08 = $973.82
- Return: 214%
- Setup payback: $697 / ($1,428.90 - $397) = 0.68 months, about three weeks
The part that never shows up in the arithmetic is the impression. A client who signs and has their contract, intake form and calendar invite within five minutes has already decided you are organised. That buys you patience later, when something goes wrong.
Want These Numbers Run on Your Business?
The Setup is a paid two-hour session that comes with every plan. We build the first piece on your real work and you watch it work.
Book a TimeThe Costs That Are Not on the Invoice
Every one of those scenarios assumes things that cost you something the price list does not show.
Your time during setup
Someone has to explain how the current process works, look at the automated version and say what is wrong with it. Budget a few hours of your own time in the first month. It is real, and it comes out of revenue-generating work.
The first month is slower
Anyone using the new system needs to learn where to check things and what to do when something looks off. That settles quickly, but the first few weeks are not full speed.
It needs looking after
Automations are not set-and-forget. Software changes, connections break, your own process moves. That maintenance is what the monthly membership is for. If you are running it yourself instead, put a couple of hours a month aside for it and mean it.
Automating the wrong thing
This is the expensive mistake. Spending your effort on a process that takes two hours a week while a ten-hour-a-week process sits untouched costs you the difference for as long as it takes to notice. It is why the ranking exercise at the bottom of this page matters more than the formula itself.
The Gains That Are Not in the Formula
Most people calculate this on hours alone. The wider return is real, but it is harder to put a number on, so treat this list as upside rather than justification.
Consistency
People follow up when they are motivated and forget when they are busy. They write a careful onboarding email on Monday and a two-line one on Friday. A system does the same thing at the same quality every time, and over months that gap compounds.
Speed
Being first matters more than being fast. In a competitive market the first useful response often wins the deal outright, and that is a revenue effect rather than a time saving.
Fewer mistakes
Manual data entry produces transposed digits and misspelled names, and every one of them costs somebody time to find and fix. Some of them cost more than time, in the form of a wrong invoice or a missed appointment.
Capacity
This is the one that matters longest. A manual process that takes ten hours a week at your current volume takes twenty at double the volume, and then you are hiring. An automated one mostly does not. It turns a rising cost into a flat one.
Better work for whoever was doing it
Nobody took a job to copy data between spreadsheets. Take that off someone's plate and they spend the time on work that needs a person, which is usually why you hired them.
When the Answer Is No
I would rather tell you this now than after you have paid me.
You do not have the volume
At three leads a week you do not need lead follow-up automation, you need to pick up the phone. The manual process has to be genuinely eating your week before any of this makes sense.
The thing annoying you is not the thing costing you
These are often different. Someone once wanted their meeting scheduling automated. They had five meetings a week. That is a ten-dollar-a-month scheduling link, not a system. Meanwhile they were hand-chasing fifty leads a week. Start from the math, not the irritation.
You will not let it run
If you are going to review and rewrite every single thing the system produces, you have added a step rather than removed one. Some review is right at the start. Permanent review means the return is always negative, because you are paying for something you are not actually using.
Your process is not a process yet
You cannot automate chaos. If your follow-up works differently every week, run it the same way manually for a month first. Defining and automating at the same time doubles the work and halves the quality.
The math genuinely does not work
Sometimes the honest answer is not yet. If the process gives back an hour a month at $25 an hour, that is $25 against $147 and the answer is no. Run the numbers before you decide, not after.
What It Actually Costs
- Setup, $697: a paid two-hour session where we build the first piece on your real business and you watch it work. It comes with every plan. Your first payment covers the Setup and your first month: $697 with Cruise, $997 with Accelerate, $1,497 with Overdrive.
- Membership: $97 a month with no one-to-one hours, $397 a month with an hour of my time, or $897 a month with three. Annual is roughly ten times monthly.
- One-off working sessions: $497 an hour, if you would rather not commit to anything monthly.
Current rates hold through December 31. On January 1 every plan goes up.
A 90-Day Tracking Plan
Do not assume it is working. Measure it.
Before you start: track how many hours a week the manual process really takes. Time yourself if you have to. Note the error rate and the response times. That is your baseline, and without it none of the rest means anything.
Days 1 to 30: same metrics, weekly. Expect bumps and expect to spend some time managing the system itself. Count that time too.
Days 31 to 60: it should be tuned by now. Compare against the calculation you did up front. If you are well below what you projected, something needs adjusting, and it is as likely to be the projection as the system.
Days 61 to 90: full run rate. Recalculate the return with real numbers. If it is positive, pick the next process. If it is not, work out why before you build anything else.
How to Rank What to Automate First
- Work out the monthly manual cost of each candidate (hours x rate x 4.33).
- Pick the plan each one would need and add $50 for the Setup in year one.
- Calculate the monthly savings for each.
- Rank by savings, largest first.
- Break ties on revenue. Where two are close, do the one that touches money coming in before the one that tidies something internal.
This is a fifteen-minute exercise and it is the highest-value fifteen minutes in the whole process.
Bottom Line
The return on this is arithmetic, not a leap of faith. Hours saved, times what those hours cost you, minus what the system costs. The four examples above land between 132% and 530%, and those numbers are nothing more than the inputs I put into them. Change the hourly rate and they change with it.
Run yours. If it comes out positive, book a session and bring your numbers.
Common Questions
How do I calculate the ROI of AI automation for my business?
Multiply the hours per week a task takes by the hourly cost of whoever does it, then by 4.33, to get the monthly manual cost. Subtract what the system costs per month, which in year one is the membership plus the $697 Setup divided by twelve. Divide the savings by the monthly cost and multiply by 100 for the return. Use your real hourly cost, not your billing rate.
How long does AI automation take to pay for itself?
The one-time $697 Setup is paid back once the process has saved you $697 worth of time. On a ten-hour-a-week task done by someone costing $65 an hour that takes about a week, and on a five-hour-a-week task done by someone costing $25 an hour it takes about six weeks. After that the only ongoing question is whether the monthly membership is worth what it gives back.
Is AI automation worth it for a small business?
It is worth it when you have a defined, repeatable process eating enough hours for the savings to clear the monthly cost, and when you are willing to let the system run rather than rewriting everything it produces. It is not worth it when your volume is low, your process changes every week, or the thing annoying you is not the thing costing you.
What does AI automation cost against what it saves?
Setup is a one-time $697 and memberships are $97, $397 or $897 a month. On the $97 plan, year one works out to $155 a month once the Setup is spread over twelve months. If the system gives you back two and a half hours a month and your time is worth $65 an hour, it has paid for itself. If it gives back an hour, it has not.
