Manual CRM work hides well. Ten minutes copying form submissions into the CRM, twenty minutes assigning leads, half an hour building the same weekly list. This calculator adds those up, puts a cost on the part that could be automated, and counts the leads that wait too long for a first reply.
You enter five numbers: the hours per week your team spends on manual CRM tasks, the loaded hourly cost of that time (salary plus overheads), the share of that work you think could realistically be automated, new leads per month, and the share of those leads that get followed up later than you’d like. You get three figures back: hours a year that could be automated, the cost of that time per year, and the number of leads followed up late per year.
Everything in the result is an estimate based only on the numbers you enter. It isn’t a forecast, a benchmark or a promise of what automation will return. If your inputs are rough, the output is rough too.
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What the three numbers mean
The hours a year figure is your weekly manual hours multiplied by the share you said could be automated, over 48 working weeks. The cost of that time multiplies those hours by your loaded hourly cost. Both come straight from your inputs, which makes them the easiest numbers to defend. The automatable share matters more than people expect. Reviewing unusual records, judging lead quality and talking to customers should stay with people, so a conservative share gives a more honest answer than 100%.
The leads followed up late per year is your monthly lead volume multiplied by the late share, over twelve months. It’s a count, not a dollar figure. We deliberately don’t turn it into lost revenue, because that depends on your conversion rates and deal values, which the calculator doesn’t ask for. If you know those numbers, you can do that step yourself; if you don’t, the count alone is usually enough to start the conversation.
Here’s how that plays out. A team estimates 12 hours a week of manual lead entry and assignment, and says around a third of its inbound leads get a first reply the next day or later. The hours and cost are easy to check against a timesheet. The late-lead count is harder to interpret: some of those leads would never have bought anyway. What the result does make clear is that both problems share a cause, leads arriving in the CRM without an owner or a next step, and fixing the routing addresses both.
A result can also tell you automation isn’t worth it yet. If the manual time is small and follow-up is already fast, a build may cost more than it saves, and that’s a useful answer.
Before you automate
The number is only part of the decision. Automating a broken process makes it fail faster. Before building, check that the data the automation depends on is reliable, and that the rules (who gets which lead, what counts as late) are agreed. Our guide to auditing CRM automation covers what to check, and the lead routing guide explains how assignment rules are usually structured.