Free Tool
AI Automation ROI Calculator
Work out the payback period, annual savings and return on investment of an AI automation project before you spend anything. Built for Australian businesses, using real wage on-costs and the honest discounts most vendor calculators leave out. It will tell you plainly when the maths does not work.
AI Automation ROI Calculator
Australian figures, with the honest discounts already built in. It will tell you when automation is a bad purchase.
The benefit
Measure it for a fortnight rather than estimating. Estimates are wrong in both directions.
A well-built workflow with human review typically handles 70% to 85% of volume on its own.
Reviewing exceptions and spot-checking outputs. Budget 10% to 15% of the original task time.
Not the award wage. Salary plus on-costs, divided by hours actually worked.
The cost
The one-off design and development quote.
Hosting, LLM API usage, subscriptions and monitoring. Typically $100 to $400 for a single workflow.
APIs change and edge cases surface. Budget 15% to 20% of the build cost every year.
$1,002 a year
Strong — worth doing
Under 12 months. Proceed if the process is stable and the systems involved are ones you intend to keep.
One assumption this cannot check for you: the hours reclaimed only become a benefit if they are redeployed into something that earns or saves money. If the freed time is spread thinly across an already comfortable week, the saving never shows up in your accounts. Revenue-based cases should be run on gross margin, not revenue.
How to calculate AI automation ROI
The formula itself is simple. Annual ROI is the annual benefit minus the annual cost, divided by the total cost. The payback period is the upfront build cost divided by the monthly net benefit. Almost every bad automation decision comes from filling in those inputs dishonestly rather than from the arithmetic.
The value of an hour is not the award wage. It is salary plus superannuation, workers compensation and payroll tax, divided by the hours someone actually works in a year, which is closer to 1,670 than 1,976 once annual leave, public holidays and personal leave come out. For an Australian office administrator that lands around $46 an hour, not $34. Use the award wage and you will undervalue the automation by 30 per cent or more.
Two discounts then come off the time saved. A well-built workflow with human-in-the-loop review handles roughly 70 to 85 per cent of volume on its own, and someone still has to review the exceptions it flags. A task that looks like six hours a week usually returns about four hours of genuinely reclaimed time.
On the cost side, the build price is only one of four layers. Monthly running costs for hosting and AI model usage, annual maintenance at 15 to 20 per cent of the build, and your own time spent measuring and testing all belong in the calculation. Leave them out and every project looks profitable.
The full method, including three worked Australian examples and the cases where we tell clients not to automate, is in our guide to calculating the ROI of AI automation. For current build prices by project size, see how much AI automation costs in Australia.
AI automation ROI calculator FAQs
How do you calculate the ROI of AI automation?
Multiply the hours a task takes each week by the share the automation handles on its own, subtract the time someone spends reviewing exceptions, then value the remaining hours at your fully loaded staff cost. That is your annual benefit. Subtract annual running costs and maintenance to get the net benefit, and divide the build cost by the monthly net benefit to get the payback period.
What is a good payback period for an automation project?
For Australian small and mid-sized businesses, under 12 months is strong and worth proceeding with if the process is stable. Twelve to 24 months is reasonable, and it is where most well-scoped single-workflow builds land. Over 24 months is usually a no, because your systems, your team or the AI tooling itself will change before you break even.
What hourly rate should I use for staff time?
Not the award wage. Take the base salary, add superannuation at 12 per cent, workers compensation of roughly 0.5 to 1 per cent, and payroll tax if your total wages are over your state threshold. Divide that by about 1,670 productive hours a year rather than 1,976, because nobody works 52 weeks. An Australian office administrator on $68,000 costs closer to $46 for every hour of work you actually get.
Does automation ROI need to include maintenance costs?
Yes, and leaving it out is the most common reason a business case looks better than it is. APIs change, software gets updated and edge cases surface. Budget 15 to 20 per cent of the build cost every year, on top of hosting, AI model usage and monitoring. Anyone who tells you a custom automation is maintenance free has not run one for a full year.
How much does AI automation cost in Australia?
Off-the-shelf tools you build and maintain yourself run $15 to $450 a month. A single professionally built workflow is typically $2,000 to $6,000 one-off, multi-system automation runs $6,000 to $25,000, and custom AI agents start around $25,000. Expect ongoing costs of roughly $100 to $2,500 a month depending on the size of the build.
When is AI automation not worth it?
When the freed time has nowhere to go, when the process is about to change, when the underlying process is broken and should be fixed rather than automated, and when the volume is too low for the fixed build cost to be worth carrying. A calculator can tell you the payback period, but it cannot tell you whether the reclaimed hours will actually be redeployed into work that earns or saves money.
If the numbers clear the bar
We will map the workflow, tell you what a build actually costs, and give you the payback maths in writing. If the maths does not work, we will tell you that too. WebArt Design builds custom AI automation and business process systems for clients across Perth and Australia.
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