ROI Calculator
What is the busywork actually costing you?
Every small firm pays for the same hours twice: once in salary, and again in the client work that never gets done because someone spent the afternoon chasing a document. Move two sliders and see the monthly number, then see what it looks like when AI agents carry that load instead.
Admin labor cost calculator
Start with your own numbers
Your firm
Typical for a law firm: intake, chasing records and signatures, status updates, and calendar follow-up.
Step 1Average hourly rate of the person doing this work
Base wage, not the loaded cost. Payroll taxes and benefits are added for you below.
Step 2Hours per week spent on repetitive admin work
Intake, document chasing, verification, follow-ups, re-keying the same fields between systems.
Step 3People doing it, and what a managed service would run you
The monthly figure is an editable planning estimate, not a quote. Scope drives price, and we quote after a discovery call. Change it to whatever you have budgeted.
Your monthly cost for this work today
$32/hr × 18 hrs/wk × 4.33 wks × 1 person × 1.08 payroll burden
Estimated monthly impact
$1,244
Saved every month, from $2,694 down to $1,450.
- Cost today$2,694
- CapeFear.ai$1,450
- Hours handed back per year936 hrs
- Estimated annual impact$14,923
Nothing here is stored or sent anywhere. The numbers stay in your browser.
The math, in the open
How we got to that number
No black box. The monthly cost is your hourly rate multiplied by hours per week, multiplied by 4.33 weeks in an average month, multiplied by the number of people doing the work, multiplied by 1.08 for payroll taxes and benefits.
That 1.08 burden figure is deliberately low. Most firms carry a true loaded cost closer to 1.25 or higher once you count benefits, paid time off, software seats, and the cost of covering the role when someone is out. We would rather understate the number than sell you on an inflated one.
What is not in the number
Revenue lost to a slow response, work that had to be redone because a form was missed, overtime, recruiting and training when an admin leaves, and the client who quietly went elsewhere. Those are real, and none of them are in this calculator.
What savings actually means
Most small firms do not cut headcount. They redeploy the hours, so the same person handles more files, answers faster, or finally gets to the higher-value work. Read the number as the value of the capacity you get back.
When we tell you not to buy
If the two monthly figures land close together, a labor swap is the wrong reason to hire us. The case then has to be capacity, response time, or accuracy. We will say that on the call rather than sell you an engagement that never pays for itself.
What the agents take over
The hours in question, by industry
Law firms
New-client intake and conflict pre-checks, chasing discovery documents and signatures, matching what arrived against what is still outstanding, deadline and follow-up queues, and status updates clients would otherwise call about.
Insurance agencies
Renewal packets assembled ahead of the date, certificate and document requests, carrier follow-up that would otherwise sit in a folder, and the same client details re-keyed between the management system and everything else.
Property management
Owner and tenant requests routed and answered, renewal and insurance paperwork chased down before the deadline, vendor coordination, and the monthly reporting pack pulled together without a person assembling it by hand.
Dental practices
Insurance verification before the appointment, claim submission and the follow-up when one stalls, pre-op and post-op patient outreach, and after-hours calls answered instead of going to voicemail.
Every one of them
Anything client-facing is drafted and queued for a human to approve before it goes out. The agent does the gathering, the assembling, and the chasing. You keep the judgment call, which is the part clients are paying for.
Inside the tools you already run
Agents work in your existing email, case management, and file storage rather than asking your team to learn another platform. No migration, no new interface, no second place to check.
Common questions
Before you take this number to a partner meeting.
Is the CapeFear.ai monthly figure a real price?
It is an editable planning estimate, not a quote. Scope drives price: how many workflows, how many systems we connect to, how much volume runs through them. We scope and quote after a short discovery call, and that field is yours to change to whatever you have budgeted.
Do AI agents replace my staff?
In practice, no. Most firms redeploy the recovered hours rather than cut headcount, because the same person is suddenly handling more clients or more files. The savings figure is best read as the value of the capacity you get back.
Where do the starting numbers come from?
Each industry preset is a typical support-role wage and a typical admin load for a small firm in that vertical. They are starting points, not benchmarks. Your own numbers will be better than ours, which is why every field is editable.
Are you storing what I type?
No. The calculator runs entirely in your browser. Nothing is submitted, logged, or sent anywhere, and there is no form to fill out to see your result.
How long until it is running?
A first agent typically goes live in weeks, not quarters, because we build inside the systems you already use instead of migrating you onto a new one. Discovery, build, test against real data, then a supervised go-live.
What happens on the call?
You walk us through a normal week. We pick out the two or three workflows worth automating first, scope them, and explain in plain English what we would build and why. If it does not fit right now, we tell you that.
Next step
Bring your number to a 30-minute call.
Tell us the workflow behind the hours and we will tell you, honestly, whether an agent pays for itself. No pitch deck, no obligation, and no pressure if the timing is wrong.