How do I work out what a manual process costs per year?

Hours per week times loaded hourly cost times working weeks. Twelve hours a week is about 560 hours at 47 working weeks, and at a €40 loaded cost about €22,500 a year. Put in your own numbers — that is the whole method.

What counts into the loaded hourly cost of an employee?

More than the salary: employer fees, holiday and overhead. As a rule of thumb the loaded cost runs well above the gross wage, which is why the example uses €40 an hour where a payslip would say less. Adjust the assumption to your own cost picture.

How fast does an automation pay for itself?

Build cost divided by the process’s monthly cost. A €6,500 build against a process costing €22,500 a year is paid back in under four months. Snabba Pucks’ band for typical yearly cost, 120 000–300 000 kr, gives the same order of magnitude for most real processes.

Which processes rarely carry an automation of their own?

Three kinds: processes that change every week, low-volume processes — one hour a week is about €1,900 a year — and processes where the exceptions are the real job. They belong further down the list, after the stable ones are built away.

Do we have to do the review before a build is priced?

Yes. A fixed price needs a known scope, and the review is what makes the scope known: hours and money per process, a priority order and a fixed quote for the top three. It costs €2,200 and takes two weeks.

When does automation pay for itself?

Torn StudioPublished 2026-09-013 min read

Torn Studio builds websites, products and content with AI tooling, from Sweden. Projects run in weeks.

Short answer

Automation pays for itself when the yearly cost of the manual process clearly exceeds the build cost. The arithmetic is short: hours per week times loaded hourly cost times working weeks. Snabba Pucks publishes 120 000–300 000 kr as the typical yearly cost of such processes in Sweden; a Torn Studio build costs €4,200–8,800, once.

Automation is the purchase where the value can be verified by arithmetic before anything is signed. The calculation needs three numbers you already have — hours per week, loaded hourly cost and working weeks — and this article runs it with every assumption in the open.

What does a manual process cost per year?

Count it like this: hours per week times loaded hourly cost times working weeks. A process that takes twelve hours a week is about 560 hours a year at 47 working weeks. At a loaded cost of €40 an hour — salary, employer fees and overhead — it costs about €22,500 a year. Swap in your own numbers; the arithmetic holds either way.

The market confirms the order of magnitude from the other side: Swedish supplier Snabba Pucks publishes 120 000–300 000 kr as the typical yearly cost of the manual processes its customers automate, and prices a system-integration build at 40 000–80 000 kr, one-off.

Typical yearly cost of the manual processes120,000–300,000 kr
System integration, one-off build40,000–80,000 kr

Snabba Pucks’ published Swedish bands, as read on 2026-08-28: the yearly cost of manual processes against the one-off price of a system integration. Source: Snabba Pucks — Vad kostar automation

How do you count the payback?

Payback time is the build cost divided by the process’s monthly cost. A €6,500 build against a process costing €22,500 a year — about €1,875 a month — is paid back in under four months. At Torn Studio a build costs €4,200–8,800 fixed, so the middle of the band against the example process lands in the same order of magnitude.

When does the arithmetic break?

Processes that change every week: the automation gets rebuilt more often than it earns, and operations — from €750 a month at the studio — eat the case.
Low volume: a process of one hour a week is about €1,900 a year on the same assumptions, and that rarely carries a build of its own.
Hidden exceptions: when every tenth case needs a human judgement, the exceptions are often the real job, and they belong in the calculation before a build is priced.

How the calculation gets real numbers

The review exists to replace assumptions with measurements: two weeks, €2,200, hours and money per process, and a fixed quote for the three automations that return the most. Then the payback arithmetic above runs on your own numbers, with the assumptions swapped for measurements.

Evidence

What this article rests on — a measurement we took, a dated source, or a decision we made and what it cost.

Decision2026-08-27
The automation offer starts with a fixed-price review — €2,200, two weeks — and every build price is set only after the review has put hours and money on the processes.
What it cost: A paid step before the build raises the buying threshold: a buyer who wants to start building immediately can pick a supplier that quotes on the spot, and the review has to earn its place every time.
Source2026-08-28
Vad kostar automation — typical yearly cost of manual processes 120 000–300 000 kr
Publisher: Snabba Pucks

Common questions

How do I work out what a manual process costs per year?: Hours per week times loaded hourly cost times working weeks. Twelve hours a week is about 560 hours at 47 working weeks, and at a €40 loaded cost about €22,500 a year. Put in your own numbers — that is the whole method.
What counts into the loaded hourly cost of an employee?: More than the salary: employer fees, holiday and overhead. As a rule of thumb the loaded cost runs well above the gross wage, which is why the example uses €40 an hour where a payslip would say less. Adjust the assumption to your own cost picture.
How fast does an automation pay for itself?: Build cost divided by the process’s monthly cost. A €6,500 build against a process costing €22,500 a year is paid back in under four months. Snabba Pucks’ band for typical yearly cost, 120 000–300 000 kr, gives the same order of magnitude for most real processes.
Which processes rarely carry an automation of their own?: Three kinds: processes that change every week, low-volume processes — one hour a week is about €1,900 a year — and processes where the exceptions are the real job. They belong further down the list, after the stable ones are built away.
Do we have to do the review before a build is priced?: Yes. A fixed price needs a known scope, and the review is what makes the scope known: hours and money per process, a priority order and a fixed quote for the top three. It costs €2,200 and takes two weeks.

Sources

Vad kostar automation — Snabba Pucks
Evidence for the yearly-cost band 120 000–300 000 kr, the integration band 40 000–80 000 kr and upkeep from 3 000 kr a month.