What is an hour of your time worth? Calculate the payback time of a role
Following up on a quote takes you ten minutes. The question is not whether that is a lot. The question is what you could have done differently with those ten minutes, and how often a week that happens.
This piece gives you one calculation, and shows how to fill it in for each industry. We don't quote saved hours that we haven't measured. You work with your own figures, and you see for yourself whether it pays off.
The calculation
A role at Stilops has a fixed price per month, excluding VAT, with a set number of tasks included. Divide that price by what an hour of your time is worth. That is the number of hours the role has to take over before it pays for itself.
An example using only figures from the catalogue. The Administrative Assistant costs 99 euros per month. If an hour of your time is worth 99 euros, it has paid for itself after one hour of work taken over. If an hour is worth half that, after two hours. If it is worth twice as much, after half an hour.
Two things you should count honestly. First, your own review time: every task first runs as a test run, and you read the result before anything happens. That takes time. Second, the tasks: if you use more than the role includes, an extra charge per additional task applies. For the Planner, that is 3 euros per task.
You can choose what an hour of your time is worth in two ways. What you bill per hour, if you had spent that hour on a client. Or what you would pay to be rid of it.
Construction and installation
The Planner schedules tasks and milestones, flags approaching deadlines and drafts status updates. It costs 129 euros per month, with forty tasks included. The question for you: how many status updates and planning emails do you write per month, and how much time does each take?
The Sales Assistant drafts quotes, follow-up emails and lead notes, and never sends anything itself. It costs 179 euros per month, with sixty tasks included.
Financial advice and accounting firms
The Administrative Assistant processes invoices, data entry and document management: 99 euros per month, forty-five tasks. The Tax Return Assistant prepares tax returns for review, monitors deadlines and organises the documentation: 199 euros per month, twenty tasks. The Bookkeeping Support helps with receipts, invoices and routine questions: 249 euros per month, twenty-five tasks.
The question here: what share of your monthly work is preparation that you or your employee currently do, before the real judgement begins?
Retail and web shops
Customer Service drafts replies for customer conversations and sorts incoming requests: 229 euros per month, a hundred tasks. If you connect your web shop via Shopify or bol, the agent can look up orders and returns. The question: how many emails per week are almost the same question?
Software and services
The Support Desk Assistant proposes ticket triage and writes customer-facing knowledge base articles: 199 euros per month, ninety tasks. You write a knowledge base article once and it is read a hundred times, so the question is which tickets come back every week.
Legal and consultancy
Legal Support drafts contract texts and legal checklists: 249 euros per month, twenty tasks. It is not a replacement for a lawyer, and you don't use it that way: your lawyer reviews, the agent prepares.
In consultancy, the Secretary (109 euros per month, fifty tasks) comes into play for calendar and correspondence, and the Planner for milestones and status updates.
What we don't know
We don't know how many hours this will save you. It depends on your work, and we don't yet have customer figures we would dare to quote. That is why it remains a calculation in which you fill in the numbers.
Count for a week how many hours go into this kind of work. Then you will know for yourself whether the calculation holds, before you decide anything.