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Admin Cost Calculator | How Much Is Admin Costing Your Business? | Montaj Digital
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How Much Is Admin Really Costing Your Business Each Year?

Enter your team size and salary info below. We'll show you the true cost of manual work and how much you could recover by automating it.

Knowledge workers spend an average of 15 hrs/week on automatable admin
That's 37.5% of a standard working week
Up to 70% of that can be automated today

If your team spends time chasing emails, updating spreadsheets, formatting reports, or manually copying data between systems, those hours have a real salary cost attached to them, and most business owners underestimate it by a significant margin.

This calculator takes your team size, average salary, and estimated admin hours to show you the true annual cost of manual work, how many of those hours could realistically be automated, and the value your business could recover by doing so.

Admin Cost Calculator

People who handle admin, comms, reporting, or data work
Gross salary per team member in that group
£
Per team member. Include: email chasing, data entry, manual reporting, copying between systems
15 hrs
15 hrs/week is the industry average for knowledge workers
For professional services firms. Unlocks the revenue impact, not just cost saved.
£

Your results

Annual admin cost
-
Total salary cost of admin hours across your team
Hours lost per year
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Across your entire team combined
Full-time equivalent
-
Equivalent employees doing nothing but admin
Admin % of wages
-
Share of your total wage cost going to admin work
Automatable hrs (70%)
-
Based on industry automation benchmarks
Value recoverable
-
If 70% of admin time were automated

Want to know exactly where this time is going?

Book a free 60-minute AI Implementation Audit. We'll map your workflows, identify your top 3 automation opportunities, and show you a clear path to recovering these hours.

Book Your Free AI Audit Not sure if you're ready? Take the 3-minute AI Readiness Quiz first

How to use this calculator

Start by entering the number of people in your team who regularly handle knowledge work: client communications, reporting, data entry, document management, or anything that involves moving information between systems.

Add your average annual salary for those team members. The admin hours slider defaults to 15 hours per week, which is the industry average for knowledge workers. Adjust it based on your honest assessment. If you're not sure, track one team member for a week and note every task that felt repetitive or could have been handled by a system.

The optional billable rate field is for consultancies, agencies, legal, financial, or any firm that charges clients by the hour. It converts recovered time from a cost saving into an actual revenue opportunity, which is usually the more powerful number.

How admin costs compound in a growing service business

Most business owners think of admin as a minor irritation rather than a strategic cost. The numbers tell a different story. When a team member earning £40,000 per year spends 15 hours each week on tasks that could be automated, that's nearly £15,000 in salary being allocated to work that doesn't require a human. Multiply that across five people and you're losing £75,000 per year to processes a well-designed automation could handle in seconds.

The compounding effect is what makes this particularly damaging. Admin doesn't just cost money. It degrades the quality of the work that does require human judgment. When your best people spend their mornings chasing approvals, copying data between spreadsheets, or formatting reports, they arrive at the high-value work later, more tired, with less capacity for the thinking your clients are actually paying for.

The most common automatable tasks we find across service businesses include:

  • Email routing, follow-up sequences, and client update notifications
  • Data entry and cross-system synchronisation (CRM, accounting, project management)
  • Report generation, formatting, and distribution
  • Document creation from templates: proposals, contracts, onboarding packs
  • Appointment scheduling and calendar coordination
  • Invoice creation, chasing, and reconciliation
  • Internal status updates and approvals workflows

None of these require significant AI. They require clear processes, the right tools, and someone who knows how to connect them. That's what the M.A.P. Method (Map, Automate, Productise) is designed to do, and it's the framework behind every AI implementation we run at Montaj Digital.

Frequently asked questions

How much time do employees really spend on admin?
Research by McKinsey consistently shows knowledge workers spend around 28 hours per week on emails and internal communications alone, far more than their actual core job. Our figure of 15 hours on specifically automatable admin tasks is deliberately conservative. It accounts only for structured, repeatable tasks that a system could handle today. The true number for your business is almost certainly higher once you track it honestly.
What types of admin can actually be automated?
Any task that follows a consistent pattern and involves moving or transforming information is a strong candidate. Data entry, document generation, email follow-ups, status reporting, invoice processing, appointment scheduling, CRM updates, and internal approvals workflows are the most common. Tasks that require genuine human judgment, creative thinking, or relationship-building should not be automated, and with good process design, you won't need to.
Why does the calculator use 70% as the automatable percentage?
McKinsey's 2023 research on automation potential suggests that between 60% and 80% of current knowledge work activities could be automated with existing technology. We use 70% as a conservative working figure to avoid overpromising. Some businesses we work with recover more. The actual percentage for your business depends on how repeatable your specific workflows are and how cleanly your data is structured.
How quickly does automation pay for itself?
For most service businesses in the 5–50 staff range, the first wave of automation covers its implementation cost within 3 to 6 months. The highest-leverage automations (typically CRM data entry, report generation, and email follow-up sequences) can return several times their cost in the first year. Payback period depends on your hourly cost rate, hours saved per automation, and build complexity. Our free AI Implementation Audit calculates this for your specific workflows before any commitment is required.
Is this the same as AI? Will I need to replace my team?
Automation and AI are related but different. Most of the admin cost you've calculated can be addressed with workflow automation, no AI required. AI is an additional layer you can add to handle more complex, judgment-based tasks. Neither replaces your team. The goal is to remove the work your team least wants to do (the repetitive, low-judgment tasks), so they can spend more time on the work that actually differentiates your business. Businesses that automate well tend to grow their teams because they can serve more clients without proportional increases in overhead.
How do I get started?
The best starting point is a workflow audit, not a technology decision. Before choosing any tool, map your three most time-consuming repeatable processes. For each one, note the trigger (what starts the task), the steps involved, and the output. Once you can see the pattern clearly, the right tools become obvious. Our free 60-minute AI Implementation Audit does exactly that, and delivers a written report with your top automation opportunities ranked by impact within 24 hours.

Ready to recover these hours?

Book a free 60-minute AI Implementation Audit. No pitch, no obligation. Just a clear picture of where your admin time is going and exactly what it would take to automate it.

Book Your Free AI Audit Take the 3-minute AI Readiness Quiz first