What does your process really cost?
Calculate the complete cost of a business process - including hidden costs that are often overlooked.
Process Steps
Add at least one process step to calculate costs.
Add the individual steps of your process to calculate costs.
How the calculator works
No industry averages, no database in the background. Only your figures, an arithmetic you can see, and a result you can recompute by hand.
1. Steps, not gut feel
You break the process into its steps and enter, per step: handling time, waiting time until the next step, the role responsible and the error rate.
2. Fully loaded cost per minute
Every role carries an hourly rate with an overhead surcharge on top — 30 percent by default for employer costs. Waiting time and rework are priced separately instead of being folded into handling time.
3. Three numbers and where they come from
Cost per run, per month, per year — broken down into labour, overhead, waiting time and errors, plus the three most expensive steps. Anyone who doubts the number can see at once which input caused it.
What companies use the calculator for
The question is rarely what the process costs. It is usually whether one specific change pays for itself.
The approval that needs three signatures
Four minutes of handling, two days of sitting idle. The calculator separates the two — and shows that the cost is not in the handling.
The request that keeps coming back
A 15 percent error rate sounds small. At 400 cases a month it is half a full-time position spent on rework.
The counter-calculation to a quote
A tool costs 8,000 euros a year. Whether that carries is decided by the current-state figure — not by the saving printed in the quote.
Comparing two variants
Model the same process twice: once as it runs, once as it should run. The difference is the argument.
Limits of this calculation
The result is an extrapolation from your estimates, not a measurement. Present it as a measurement and it falls apart at the first follow-up question.
- Handling times are almost always underestimated. People remember the good run, not the median one. If you have a range in mind, take the upper value.
- The calculator works with one average per step. A process with widely varying run times therefore comes out systematically too cheap — that case needs a distribution, not a mean.
- Waiting time is not automatically cost. If people work on something else while a case sits idle, no additional effort is incurred — the figure then quantifies lead time, not cost.
Frequently asked questions about process costs
What are process costs?
The sum of every resource a single process run consumes: working time of all roles involved, employer costs on top of it, the cost of waiting time between steps and the effort spent on rework after errors. Licence and material costs are not included — those are in your accounts already.
How does the calculator compute the cost?
Per step: duration in minutes times the per-minute rate of the responsible role, plus the overhead surcharge. Waiting time and error rate are added separately. The result is extrapolated to month and year via the monthly frequency. Every intermediate figure appears in the breakdown.
Which hourly rate should I use?
The fully loaded rate, not the gross salary. The calculator ships defaults for four roles and adds 30 percent overhead by default. If your HR department keeps its own fully loaded costing, enter that figure — it beats any default.
Why is waiting time included?
Because in most processes it accounts for the largest share of lead time and still appears in no costing. It is reported separately so you can decide for yourself whether, in your case, it causes real cost or merely lets time pass.
What data do I need?
No report out of a system. The steps, an estimate of the duration per step and the monthly frequency are enough. If you want it sharper, measure along for a week — that usually shifts the result noticeably.
What does it cost to use?
Nothing. No login, no registration, no forwarding of your inputs. The calculation runs in the browser, and so does the PDF.
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