How much does typing in orders by hand cost you?
Every order that arrives by email and gets copied into the ERP or a spreadsheet by hand takes a few minutes. One at a time it doesn’t look like much, but over a month it adds up to hours, and those hours cost the business money.
Enter your own numbers to see how many hours and euros go into it every month, and how much would be freed up by automating it. If you don’t have a figure, keep the default: each one is explained below.
Estimated result
Check the highlighted fields to see the result.
- Time spent today
- 60 hours a month720 hours a year
- What it costs today
- €1,339 a month€16,070 a year
- Time that would be freed up
- 42 hours a month504 hours a year
- Estimated savings
- €937 a month€11,249 a year
- Time to recover the investment
- Enter an investment to work it out.
This is an estimate based on assumptions, not a promise of savings: the real result depends on how your process works.
Assumptions and sources
- Default hourly cost: €22.32, the average labor cost per paid hour in Spain in the second quarter of 2026, including social security. Per hour actually worked it rises to €26.18. It is an average across all sectors, so it is worth entering the real cost for your team.Source: INE (Spain), Quarterly Labour Cost Survey, second quarter of 2026
- The 12 minutes per order is the estimate published by a vendor of order capture software: there are no independent studies on it. Timing your own process is the most reliable option.Source: Conexiom, The real cost of manual order entry in B2B operations (2025)
- The 300 orders a month and 70% automatable are cautious assumptions so the example has numbers to show, not measured data. Replace them with your own.
- Hours per month = items × (minutes per item + error rate × minutes per error) ÷ 60. The cost is those hours times the hourly cost, and what is freed up is that times the automatable share. A year is 12 equal months. It does not include maintenance or the time spent reviewing exceptions.
Want to know how much you could really automate? A process audit measures it with your real data.
Ask for a process auditHow it works
The math is simple enough to redo in a spreadsheet:
- Minutes per month = orders or documents per month × (minutes of typing per item + error rate × minutes to fix each error).
- Hours per month = minutes per month ÷ 60. Multiply by 12 for the year.
- Cost = hours × hourly cost of the person doing it.
- What would be freed up = hours and cost × the share that can be automated.
- Payback period = investment ÷ monthly savings. Only shown if you enter an investment.
The defaults
- Hourly cost: €22.32. That’s the average labor cost per paid hour in Spain in the second quarter of 2026, including employer social security (INE, Spain’s national statistics office, Quarterly Labour Cost Survey). Counting only hours actually worked, without holidays, it rises to €26.18. It’s an average across all sectors and countries differ, so use the real cost for your team if you know it.
- 12 minutes per order. That’s the estimate published by a vendor of order capture software. There are no independent studies on this, so time a few orders and use your own average.
- 300 orders a month and 70% automatable. Cautious assumptions so the example has numbers to show. There are always exceptions (an unusual order, a missing detail) that need a person, which is why it doesn’t assume 100%.
- Errors and investment: blank by default. Fill them in and the calculation takes them into account.
What it leaves out: the cost of maintaining the automation, the time spent reviewing exceptions and the knock-on effects of mistakes (a repeat delivery, an unhappy customer). It’s an estimate built on assumptions, not a promise of savings.
Frequently asked questions
Where does the default hourly cost come from?
From INE, Spain’s national statistics office: €22.32 is the average labor cost per paid hour in Spain in the second quarter of 2026, including employer social security. It’s what the job costs the business, not the take-home pay. If you know the real figure for your team, use that instead.
Why 70% automatable and not 100%?
Because some cases always need a person: unusual formats, missing details, new customers. 70% is a cautious assumption for the example. The real share depends on how your orders arrive, and you only find out by looking at them.
Does it include errors?
It can. Enter the share of orders that go out with a mistake and how many minutes each one takes to fix, and the calculation adds that time. If you don’t know, leave it blank and the result will be more conservative.
Does it work for invoices, delivery notes or reports?
Yes. It works for any document someone copies by hand over and over: supplier invoices, delivery notes, order forms or a report that gets put together every week. Just read “orders” as whatever unit you use.
Is the data I enter stored anywhere?
No. Everything is calculated in your browser: nothing is sent, nothing is stored and there are no cookies.
What should I do with the result?
If the number surprises you, the next step is a process audit: we look together at how your orders or documents arrive, how much can really be automated and what it would cost, using your real data instead of assumptions.
Want to go through your numbers?
Tell me in a 20-minute call how many orders your team types in and how they arrive, and I’ll tell you honestly whether automating it pays off.