Property management and real estate
A property management company
One property manager sorts and assigns 40 tenant requests a day, at 4 minutes each.
600 hours a year, CHF 31’800 in salaries and 32% of a full-time position.
Free tool for SMEs in Switzerland
Time loss calculator: what do your repetitive tasks really cost?
Enter how long a task takes, how often it happens and your sector. The calculator shows the time it takes up over a year, what it costs you in salaries and the share of a full-time position it represents.
Put a figure on your tasks
Add one line per task: entering invoices, follow-ups, reports, sorting emails, copying data between two tools. The result updates as you type.
People doing it
Two worked examples
With the assumptions above, here is what two common situations in SMEs add up to.
Fiduciary, legal, consulting, architecture, engineering
An 8-person fiduciary firm
Three staff members each re-enter 25 accounting documents a day, at 3 minutes per document.
844 hours a year, CHF 51’469 in salaries and 45% of a full-time position.
How the calculation works
Time lost is the task’s duration multiplied by its frequency and by the number of people doing it. It is converted to a year of 45 working weeks: 52 weeks, minus 5 weeks of holidays and about 2 weeks of public holidays. A task done once a day counts as 5 times a week.
The hourly cost starts from the sector’s median gross monthly salary, published by the Swiss Federal Statistical Office (FSO) in the 2024 Swiss Earnings Structure Survey, private sector. That salary includes one twelfth of the 13th-month salary. It is multiplied by 12, increased by 15% for employer contributions (AHV, unemployment insurance, family allowances, occupational pension, accident insurance), then divided by 1’890 working hours a year (42 h × 45 weeks).
The share of a full-time position compares the hours lost with the 1’890 hours of a 100% position. It measures the time your team spends on these tasks, and therefore the time it could spend on something else.
| Sector | Median gross salary | Employer hourly cost |
|---|---|---|
| All sectors | 6’722 CHF / month | 49 CHF / h |
| Fiduciary, legal, consulting, architecture, engineering | 8’367 CHF / month | 61 CHF / h |
| Property management and real estate | 7’219 CHF / month | 53 CHF / h |
| Transport and logistics | 6’096 CHF / month | 45 CHF / h |
| Wholesale and retail trade | 6’011 CHF / month | 44 CHF / h |
| Manufacturing | 6’972 CHF / month | 51 CHF / h |
| Construction | 6’607 CHF / month | 48 CHF / h |
| IT and communication | 9’464 CHF / month | 69 CHF / h |
| Banking and insurance | 10’293 CHF / month | 75 CHF / h |
| Health and social work | 6’650 CHF / month | 49 CHF / h |
| Hospitality and catering | 4’733 CHF / month | 35 CHF / h |
| Administrative and support services | 5’607 CHF / month | 41 CHF / h |
| Other services | 6’883 CHF / month | 50 CHF / h |
What the calculation leaves out
The result is an order of magnitude, deliberately cautious. It only counts the salary of the people doing the task. It leaves out re-entry errors to fix, forgotten follow-ups, slow replies that lose a client and overtime at peak periods. These costs often weigh the most.
In 30 minutes, we look with you at which tasks to automate first.
Book a free callFrequently asked questions
What does an hour of an employee’s work really cost me?
For you, an hour costs the gross salary plus employer contributions, divided by the hours actually worked. With the private-sector median salary (CHF 6’722 gross a month in 2024, according to the FSO) and 15% contributions, that comes to about CHF 49 an hour, from CHF 35 in hospitality to CHF 75 in banking. If you know your own cost, replace the rate in the calculator: everything updates.
I pay my staff anyway. Where is the loss?
The salary is paid either way, that’s true. The loss is what those hours don’t produce: billed files, clients called back sooner, quotes sent on time. And as the business grows, those are the hours that force you to hire earlier than you need to.
Are my figures reliable if I estimate them off the top of my head?
They give an order of magnitude, and it is often too low: a “two-minute” task often takes five, interruptions included. For a solid figure, time the task two or three times and ask the person doing it how often they repeat it.
Can everything be automated?
Some tasks can, almost entirely: sorting and filing incoming emails, filing documents, copying data from one tool to another. Others keep a human step, for example a check before anything is sent to a client or before an accounting entry. That is why you choose the automatable share, from 50 to 100%.
How much does an automation cost, and when does it pay for itself?
The price depends on the number of tasks, the tools involved and integration complexity. It is set in a quote, and you know it before you commit. To judge it, compare it with the yearly amount shown by the calculator: that is exactly the calculation we make with you before proposing anything.
I have no IT person. Is this for me?
Yes. We work in the tools you already use, email, accounting software, CRM or spreadsheets, and we take care of implementation, documentation and maintenance. Your team needs no technical skills.
What happens to the people who did these tasks?
That is your decision. The aim is to give them time back for advice, client relationships or pending work, not to cut jobs: we do not build headcount-reduction business cases. Sensitive steps stay under your team’s review.
Where should I start?
With the task that costs the most in the calculator. Book a free 30-minute call: we look with you at whether it can be automated, what it would take and at what price. You then receive a written summary of the conversation, whether or not you work with us.
Are the figures I enter stored?
The calculation runs in your browser. We measure how the page is used anonymously, for example the sector chosen and the order of magnitude of the result, to improve the tool. Task names stay in your browser: they are neither sent nor included in the share link.
In short
The calculator multiplies each task’s duration by its frequency and by the number of people, converts the total to a year and values it at your sector’s employer hourly cost (FSO 2024 median salary plus 15% contributions). You get the hours lost, their cost in salaries and the share of a full-time position they represent. To find out how much can really be automated, the simplest step is a 30-minute call with us.
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