Automation Profit Calculator — Estimate Automation ROI

Preliminary invoice automation business case

Evidence boundary

Supplied estimates: 2,000 invoices/month; about 6 staff minutes per invoice; loaded labor estimate $32/hour. Treat these as unverified until the process owner and finance confirm them.
Unknown: exception rate, automatable share, error/rework and delay costs, implementation and integration costs, software and model charges, ongoing support, monitoring, training, human review, control needs, and realized performance.

Baseline arithmetic

At the supplied figures, current handling effort is 2,000 × 6 = 12,000 minutes/month, or 200 hours/month. At $32/hour this equals $6,400/month of labor value. This is an estimated capacity baseline, not cash savings.

Scenario framework

Do not apply a guessed automation percentage. Model net benefit only after confirming the covered share, residual review effort, exceptions, recurring costs, and whether released capacity is actually cashable or redeployed.

Missing inputs

1. Validate invoice volume, time study, seasonality, and process boundary.
2. Measure field accuracy, exception and rework rates, and current approval controls.
3. Obtain implementation, connector, license, model, maintenance, and training costs.
4. Estimate residual human review, monitoring, and failure recovery effort.
5. Confirm automation coverage and performance in a representative bounded pilot.
6. Agree whether benefits mean cash reduction, capacity, quality, speed, or avoided loss.

Decision

No ROI, payback, or positive business case is defensible yet. Run a shadow pilot with no autonomous invoice approval or payment. Finance and operations should approve assumptions, time horizon, cost basis, and pass/fail thresholds before investment. Compare automation with process simplification and deterministic alternatives, then track realized outcomes after launch.