FS-DOC-02Finance
ROI and Business Case
Time Tracking and Billable Hours
01What the current process is costing you
Every week a Practice Manager spends hours chasing the team for timesheets, filling gaps from memory, and reconciling hours before billing. The numbers are rarely trusted, partners resent the repetition, and unrecorded time exits the business as lost revenue. The tiles below show the current cost of running this process manually at [YourCompany.com].
6 hrs/week
Staff time lost
Benchmark: 26 hrs per 30 days
$12,600/yr
Annual staff cost
At $40/hr blended rate
76%
Timesheet completion
24% of billable time at risk
The three steps below are confirmed bottlenecks in the current process. Each one is a manual, repetitive task that slips first when the team is under pressure.
- Chase Missing Timesheets (Practice Manager, 40 min/cycle): Individual follow-up emails and messages sent to each team member with outstanding entries. High friction, high resentment.
- Fill Gaps From Memory (Team Member, 35 min/cycle): Team members reconstruct what they worked on after the fact. Accuracy degrades with time, and guessed hours are often under-reported.
- Reconcile Against Jobs (Practice Manager, 45 min/cycle): Captured time is manually cross-checked against Karbon jobs before billing can proceed. Errors here delay invoicing.
Approximately 30 timesheets are processed every week. At a 70% manual rate, the majority of this work is repetitive administration with no value-add component.
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02What changes after automation
Three agents replace the repetitive steps. The Time Capture Agent drafts timesheets from existing work tools. The Gap Chaser Agent nudges only the people who have missing entries, with specific context. The Reconciliation Agent matches hours to jobs ready for billing approval. A person steps in only for the final approval, which stays human by design.
225 hrs/yr
Hours returned to the team
4.5 hrs/week back to productive work
$9,400/yr
Annual cost saving
Net of all tool costs
98%
Timesheet completion rate
Up from 76% manually
- Chasing time drops from 4 hrs/week to 0.5 hrs/week: only genuine edge cases require human follow-up.
- Billable hours recovered from the 6% that currently leak through unrecorded or guessed entries.
- Partner review time is preserved but no longer preceded by manual reconciliation work.
- Annual staff cost attributed to this process drops from $12,600 to $3,100, a saving of $9,500.
03Before and after comparison
Metric
Before (manual)
After (automated)
Weekly staff time on process
6 hrs/week
1.5 hrs/week
Chasing time per week
4 hrs/week
0.5 hrs/week
Timesheet completion rate
76%
98%
Recovered billable hours
+6% leakage
Less leakage
Annual staff cost of process
$12,600/yr
$3,100/yr
Timesheet accuracy
Guessed from memory
Captured from live tools
Partner involvement
Chasing and reconciling
Approval only
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04Tool costs
The table below covers every tool required to run the automated process, the one-off build cost, and whether [YourCompany.com] is already paying for each tool. The totals row shows the full ongoing annual cost after build.
Tool
Purpose
Monthly cost
Annual cost
Already paying?
FullSpec Automation
Orchestration and monitoring
$129
$1,548
Confirm
Karbon
Jobs and time tracking
$0 (included)
$0
Likely yes
Xero
Billing export
$0 (included)
$0
Likely yes
Slack
Targeted nudges
$0 (included)
$0
Likely yes
One-off build cost (Standard)
Setup, config, and QA
N/A
$3,200 one-off
Not yet
TOTALS
$129/month
$1,548/yr ongoing + $3,200 build
Karbon, Xero, and Slack are listed at $0 because they are already part of most practice stacks. If [YourCompany.com] is not yet on any of these, confirm costs before finalising the business case. The build cost above reflects the recommended Standard option (48 build hours).
05Net ROI summary
$7,852
Year 1 net saving
After build cost and tool fees
4 months
Payback period
Build cost recovered by month 4
The year 1 net saving accounts for the one-off $3,200 build cost and $1,548 in annual tool fees, deducted from the $12,600 gross saving. From year 2 onwards, only the $1,548 annual tool cost is deducted, producing a sustained net saving of $9,400 every year. The three-year projection is $28,200 gross saved.
Gross annual saving (staff cost)
$12,600
$12,600
Less: annual tool cost (FullSpec Automation)
($1,548)
($1,548)
Less: one-off build cost
($3,200)
$0
Net saving
$7,852
$9,400 (+ ongoing)
Cumulative saving
$7,852
$17,252
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06Assumptions log
All figures in this document are derived from the assumptions below. Where [YourCompany.com] holds actual data, replacing these values will refine the projections. Assumptions are based on internal benchmarks cross-checked against third-party industry estimates.
Assumption
Value used
Source
Blended hourly staff rate
$40/hr
Template input (assumed role: Practice Manager)
Manual time lost per week
6 hrs/week
Process benchmark (industry estimate)
Hours saved per week after automation
4.5 hrs/week
Template: hours_saved_per_week
Annual hours saved
225 hrs/year
4.5 hrs x 50 working weeks
Gross annual staff cost of process
$12,600/yr
Template: benchmark_annual_cost
Annual staff cost after automation
$3,100/yr
Template: before_after_table
Timesheet completion rate (before)
76%
Template: KPI benchmark
Timesheet completion rate (after)
98%
Template: KPI target
Billable hour leakage (before)
6%
Template: recovered billable KPI
Timesheet volume per week
~30 timesheets
Template: problem.volume
Process frequency
Daily capture, weekly close
Template: problem.frequency
One-off build cost (Standard)
$3,200
Template: snapshot.build_cost
Annual tool cost (FullSpec Automation)
$1,548/yr ($129/month)
Template: tooling
Payback period
4 months
Template: payback_period_months
Three-year gross saving
$28,200
Template: snapshot.three_year_saving_usd
Manual process proportion
70%
Template: benchmark_manual_pct
These estimates are based on thousands of completed mapping conversations, benchmarked internally and cross-checked against third-party tools. Actual results will vary. Enter [YourCompany.com]'s own volumes and rates to produce a tailored figure.
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