Your finance system knows what the software costs to license. Nobody knows what it costs to operate: the re-keying, the reconciling, the spreadsheets, the approval-chasing across a dozen systems. In most mid-market businesses that operating labor runs higher than the licenses. Answer four questions and this estimates it in hours and dollars.
Four questions · rough numbers are fine
1. How many people on your team do work that runs through software?
Roughly. Everyone whose day touches your systems, not just back office.
2. In a normal week, how many hours per person go to operating software rather than judgment or customers?
Entering the same data twice, reconciling systems that disagree, building the weekly spreadsheet, chasing approvals. Industry work puts the reorientation cost alone near four hours a week; six is a common working estimate.
6 hrs / week
3. What is the average fully-loaded cost per person, per year?
Salary plus benefits, taxes, and overhead. Pick the closest band.
4. How many separate systems does a customer-facing process touch, from first inquiry to paid invoice?
Every handoff between two systems is a place a person moves data by hand. This sharpens the read.
Enter your team size to begin
Your estimated Software Tax · per year
Operating labor, annualized
$0
the payroll your business spends operating software
0
operating hours a year, across your team
0
full-time equivalents, spent operating the stack
Method: team size × weekly operating hours × 48 working weeks, priced at the loaded hourly cost (annual cost ÷ 1,800 productive hours). Evidence: HBR "toggling tax" (~1,200 app switches per worker per day, ~4 hours a week reorienting); SaaS-management reports (~100+ apps per company, roughly half of licenses unused). This is an estimate to size the problem, not an audit. It points you where to look; it does not replace looking.
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I'll prepare a researched read of where your operating labor actually sits and what it costs, benchmarked for companies your size, and where the fastest recoverable money is. Yours to keep. Free, no obligation.