JOURNAL
Published on
WHAT COPY-PASTEACTUALLY COSTS
Nobody defends copy-paste. It’s just that nobody counts it.
THE ANSWER
The cost of manual work is worked out, not guessed. You need three numbers. How many times a month the step repeats. How many minutes one timed run takes. What an hour of that person costs the business. Multiply them, take it out to twelve months, then add rework and waiting.
AI-generated image
IN SHORT
Count the repetitions, not the hours.
Time one run: remembered estimates come in low.
Under 4 hours a year, leave it by hand.
WHY IT HIDES
THE COST OF MANUAL WORK
Manual work has no line of its own in the accounts. A tool is visible: an invoice arrives and somebody signs it. Six minutes retyping an address go nowhere. They sit inside the salary of somebody who did twenty other things that day. The subscription at a few tens of pounds a month gets questioned, the hour a day of retyping never does. The first has a number beside it. Here I give the second one too.
THE SUM
FIVE NUMBERS, IN THIS ORDER
Each number uses the one before it. They are all inside the business already. Do it on one step — the one that came to mind at the title.
Count the repetitions, not the hours
How many times a month it happens: quotes issued, invoices retyped, orders keyed in. The number is already in a system, and nobody has ever put a cost next to it.
Time one run properly
Don’t ask for an estimate from memory: watch somebody do it, first file open to last file saved. Remembered estimates come in low, because nobody counts the hunt for the right window.
Use the fully loaded hourly cost
Not take-home pay: what that hour costs the business, employer contributions included. Your accountant has the figure already, and it is higher than the one in your head.
Multiply, then annualise
Repetitions a month, times minutes per run, divided by sixty, times hourly cost, times twelve. Now you hold a figure you can set beside a quote.
Add what the sum cannot see
Retyping errors, waiting between one step and the next, the one person who knows how to do it. Those are the lines below, and they usually beat the number you started with.
AI-generated image
THE THRESHOLD
WHEN DOING NOTHING WINS
The sum is also there to say no. A ten-minute step twice a month costs 4 hours a year: any automation costs more. The rule I use: if the annual cost doesn’t cover the investment inside the first year, the step stays manual. The question isn’t whether it can be automated, because nearly anything can. It’s whether what you remove is worth what you introduce. (Sometimes copy-paste is the cheapest thing you own.)
Copy-paste is not expensive because it is hard. It is expensive because nobody counts it.
QUESTIONS
- I don’t know that person’s hourly cost. What now?
- Ask your accountant: the annual cost to the business divided by hours actually worked. If you’d rather not ask, use a low, cautious figure: if the sum holds, it really holds.
- Is a five-minute step worth removing?
- It depends only on how often it repeats. Five minutes once a month is an hour a year. Five minutes twenty times a day is whole weeks across twelve months.
- Should the cost of the automation go into the sum?
- Yes, and what comes after it too. When a connected tool changes, something has to be put right. Leaving that line out rigs the comparison in my favour.
- Which step should I start with?
- The one with the biggest number, not the one that annoys people most. They are rarely the same: the step that actually costs money is short and repeats a hundred times unnoticed.
- What if the number comes out small?
- Then you spent half an hour and got a written reason not to spend anything else. A fair share of the projects I never start come from a sum done like this.
Do the sum on one step, with your own numbers. If the figure surprises you, write and tell me which step it is. I’ll say whether it is worth removing.