Ai ROI calculator for small business

The calculator

Fill in the four fields. The estimate updates as you type. If you do not know a number exactly, use a reasonable guess. The result recalculates instantly so you can test different assumptions.

The assumption we use

This calculator assumes Ai can recover about 30 percent of the manual and admin hours you identify. That is deliberately conservative. Some tasks (scheduling, intake, status reporting, simple data movement) compress far more than 30 percent. Others need a human and compress very little. Across a real mix of small-business tasks, 30 percent is a defensible planning number rather than a best case. We also annualize using 50 working weeks per person, which leaves room for holidays and time off.

How the formula works

The math is four steps and you can run it on paper. Here it is in plain English.

• Total manual hours per week = team members times hours per person per week.
• Hours reclaimed per week = total manual hours per week times 30 percent.
• Hours reclaimed per year = hours reclaimed per week times 50 working weeks.
• Dollars reclaimed per year = hours reclaimed per year times your loaded hourly cost.

That is the entire model. No hidden multipliers and no growth assumptions. If you want a different recovery rate than 30 percent, swap that one number and the rest holds.

A fully worked example

Take a 6-person firm where each person loses about 8 hours a week to manual and admin work, at a loaded cost of $40 an hour. That is 48 manual hours a week across the team. At a 30 percent recovery rate, Ai reclaims about 14.4 hours a week. Over 50 working weeks that is 720 hours a year. At $40 an hour, those reclaimed hours are worth about $28,800 a year. The table below lays out the same numbers step by step.

That $28,800 figure is a planning estimate, not a promise. It tells you whether the opportunity is large enough to act on. For a 6-person firm, a number near $30K a year usually means there are two or three clear quick wins worth chasing. The point of the calculator is to find out before you spend anything on tools.

From estimate to a costed plan

The calculator gives you a directional number. What it cannot do is tell you which specific tasks to fix, which Ai tools fit your business, or what each one costs to set up. That is what the Ai Assessment does. For a $1,500 flat fee, paid upfront with no retainer, you get a 20-minute Ai-led discovery call, a 7 to 10 page report delivered in 3 days, and a 30-minute live walkthrough. The report names the specific 3 to 7 Ai tools that will reclaim 5 to 10 hours a week for your team, with the cost and effort attached to each one. If your calculator estimate cleared $15K to $20K, the assessment usually pays for itself in the first or second recommendation.