A proper system is not a yearly expense — it is an asset you will still be running in ten or fifteen years, and your accountant will treat it as one. So this works out how long it takes to pay for itself, what it is worth at year 7, 10 and 15, and what happens if the project goes badly.
PAYS FOR ITSELF IN
0 years
THE YEARLY NUMBERS
Manual work costs you now (per year)—
Hours won back (per year)—
Value of those hours (per year)—
Setup cost after grant—
Software cost (per year)—
Net gain per year, year 1—
WHAT IT IS WORTH IF YOU KEEP IT
Cumulative money in your pocket after the setup cost is paid back. This is the point most ROI calculators miss: a system you keep for fifteen years spends most of its life as pure return.
HOW YOUR ACCOUNTANT SEES IT
IF IT GOES BADLY
This is arithmetic, not a promise. It assumes the hours you win back turn into real work or real capacity — if the time just gets absorbed elsewhere, the money never shows up on your P&L. The 10 and 15 year figures include one major refresh in year 10 costing 40% of the original setup, because no system runs untouched for fifteen years. The sensitivity figures assume the same salary growth throughout. Treat the result as a sanity check, not a business case, and check the accounting treatment with your own accountant.
Which usually means one of two things: the numbers look good and you want to be sure, or they don't and you're trying to make them. Both are worth twenty minutes of conversation.
Bring your figures to a short video call. We'll pressure-test the assumptions — especially the recovery rate, which is where most business cases quietly fall apart — and you'll leave knowing whether it's worth doing and what to do first.
