What is hand work costing your service business?

How we calculate this

This section shows every step and every assumption so you can check the estimate, or change it. The fixed assumptions below are FSM Navigator’s own estimates, marked “ours, fixed”. They are not measured results.

Whose numbers are whose

Yours

Plan, technicians, seats, days staffed, how much is done by hand, tech paperwork minutes, how much hand work you expect to take off your plate, trips, round-trip time and miles, overtime share, jobs per day, SLA share, miss rate, penalty, contracts lost, contract value.

Starting values you can change (Advanced)

Hourly wages, the wage plus benefits multiplier, and the share of freed time you put to use. They start at published figures or our assumptions.

Ours, fixed

The 8-hour seat, the share of each role’s work the app touches, the removal levels, the share of trips and SLA misses prevented by plan, the 35% margin on a lost contract, 250 and 260 working days, 2,080 hours per person, the IRS mileage rate and the overtime factor.

Step by step

1. Hours each office seat works in a year. Seats × 8 hours × days staffed. One seat staffed 365 days is 2,920 hours, about 1.4 people’s worth at 2,080 hours each.
2. Hours spent on work the app touches. Seat hours × the app-task share for that role (table below).
3. Hours done by hand today. Touched hours × your “done by hand” figure.
4. Hours the app frees. Hand hours × the removal share for the level you chose (table below).
5. What those hours are worth. Freed hours × the hourly wage × the wage plus benefits multiplier × the share of freed time you put to use.
6. Technicians. Technicians × paperwork minutes ÷ 60 × 260 working days, then steps 3 to 5 with the technician wage and the technician realisation share.
7. Software cost. Paid users × the annual price per user per month × 12. Pro is $27.99. Enterprise is $47.99. Free is $0. Office staff who log in are users, so every seat counts, and half seats round up.
8. Net benefit, ROI and payback. Net = total value − software. ROI = net ÷ software × 100. Payback = software ÷ (total value ÷ 12), in months.
9. People’s time freed. (Freed office hours + freed technician hours + technician hours on prevented trips) ÷ 2,080.

office seat:   freed hours = seats × 8 × days staffed × app-task share × done by hand × removal share
               value       = freed hours × wage × wage-plus-benefits multiplier × office time you put to use
technicians:   freed hours = techs × paperwork minutes ÷ 60 × 260 × done by hand × removal share
               value       = freed hours × technician wage × multiplier × tech time that becomes billable

Share of each role’s work the app touches (ours, fixed)

The share of each seat the app touches is our estimate. No published study gives hours per task for these roles, so we show the assumption instead of hiding it.

How much hand work comes off your plate (ours, fixed)

The three stops on the “how much hand work you expect FSM Navigator® to take off your plate” slider set these shares of the hand work in each role.

The dispatcher figure. A dispatcher’s day, as we model it, is three kinds of work: taking phone calls (35% of the seat), assigning jobs that need a technician (25%) and reshuffling jobs through the day (40%). Intelligent dispatch acts on the second and third. Some phone requests move online through the booking page, but calls don’t disappear. The removal shares by work type, Cautious / Middle / Generous: phone calls 0% / 10% / 25%, assigning 25% / 50% / 75%, reshuffling 20% / 40% / 65%. Weighted by the split, that gives 14.25% / 32% / 53.5%. On Free the manual board makes the same work faster but doesn’t assign for you: phone calls 0% / 2% / 5%, assigning 5% / 15% / 30%, reshuffling 5% / 15% / 25%.

Wasted warehouse trips

cost of one trip = (trip minutes ÷ 60) × technician wage × [overtime share × 1.5 + (1 − overtime share) × 0.5]
                   + trip miles × IRS business mileage rate
trips value      = techs × trips per tech per day × 250 days × share prevented (by plan) × cost of one trip

• Overtime counts at time and a half. Trip time outside overtime counts at half the tech’s wage, because a tech is paid for regular hours either way and the time only has value if it gets used.
• Mileage counts at the IRS business standard rate, which covers the cost of running a vehicle, not just fuel.
• Share of trips prevented, by plan (ours, fixed): Enterprise 75%, Pro 25%, Free 10%.
  • Enterprise: parts-aware dispatch won’t assign a technician whose van stock lacks the parts a job needs, and van stock is tracked for each technician.
  • Pro: the office can put the part on the job through job notes, forms and custom fields, and matching weighs the technician’s skills and certifications.
  • Free: job notes let the office write the part on the job.
• The prevented shares are our assumptions. They are not measured results.

Missed SLAs

misses    = techs × jobs per tech per day × 250 days × share of jobs with an SLA × share that miss
SLA value = (misses × cost per miss + contracts lost × annual contract value × 35%) × share prevented (by plan)

• A job carries its SLA deadline, and the board shows SLA tracking on every plan. Intelligent dispatch (Pro and Enterprise) takes SLA urgency into account and keeps rebalancing as the day changes. On Free the board shows the deadline and you assign by hand.
• Share of misses prevented, by plan (ours, fixed): Pro and Enterprise 50%, Free 15%. These are our assumptions.
• A lost contract counts at 35% gross margin, not full revenue (ours, fixed).

Sources

Wages are national medians. Your local wages will differ, which is why every wage is a slider. State overtime rules and exemptions vary, so check yours.

What this estimate leaves out

• It doesn’t count extra revenue, faster payment, better reviews or renewals you win. We have no verified figure for any of them, so the estimate stays on time, trips and missed SLAs.
• The Free plan limits invoicing to 100 invoices a month. The Free estimate doesn’t reduce the billing figure for that limit, so treat the Free billing line as an upper bound if you send more than 100 invoices a month.
• Hours done by hand, how much the app removes and how much freed time you put to use are the three inputs that move the answer most. They are yours to set.