The short answer
An automation pays back in under three months when the hours it removes each month, multiplied by what an hour costs you, are worth at least a third of what it cost to build. At the Latvian average employer cost of about €16.29 an hour, a €1,800 automation has to remove about 37 hours of work a month to do that.
Five automations reach that line most often in companies with 10 to 100 people: supplier invoice intake, order sync, lead routing, stock alerts and the weekly report. Below is what each does, what it typically costs, and the volume where it pays back within a quarter. If you are not sure which process to start with, read What should a small company automate first? first.
The rule: build cost ÷ 3 ÷ hourly cost
Divide the build cost by three to get the monthly saving you need, then by the hourly cost to get hours. That is the minimum number of hours a month the automation has to remove.
Build costs below assume 20–60 hours at €60/h, as in How much does custom software cost? A small monthly running cost is left out for simplicity. Errors and delays avoided are not counted, so real payback is usually faster.
Use your own hourly cost if you know it. Accountants and sales people usually cost more than the average, which shortens every payback below.
1. Supplier invoice intake
Invoices arriving by email are read automatically, matched to the purchase order, sent to the right person for approval and posted to accounting. Unusual invoices go to a review queue. Typical build: €2,400–3,600, more if the invoices come in many layouts.
Pays back in under three months at about 370 to 550 invoices a month, if each takes eight minutes by hand today. Below that volume it still pays back, more slowly. Structured e-invoices between Latvian companies become mandatory from 2028, so this flow will have to change anyway; building it now means building it once.
2. Order sync
Orders from the online shop, email or a customer portal are created in the ERP or accounting system without retyping, with stock and prices checked on the way. Typical build: €1,800–3,000.
Pays back in under three months at about 370 to 610 orders a month at six minutes each. In companies that sell goods this is often the largest single block of manual hours, and the one where typing errors are the most expensive: a wrong quantity means a second delivery.
3. Lead routing and instant reply
Inquiries from the website, email and ads land in the CRM with an owner, the customer gets an immediate reply, and a reminder fires if nobody calls back within an hour. Typical build: €1,200–1,800.
On time alone it needs about 300 to 440 inquiries a month at five minutes each, which many small companies do not have. It usually pays back on speed instead. In research published in Harvard Business Review, firms that tried to contact a lead within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to qualify it as those that tried even an hour later. One extra won deal a quarter is often enough.
4. Stock alerts
Stock levels are checked every morning against minimums and open orders, and the buyer gets a short list of what to reorder. Typical build: €1,200–1,800.
Pays back in under three months if it replaces about 70 to 105 minutes of daily stock checking. Like lead routing, the bigger value is usually elsewhere: one avoided stock-out on a key product, or one less emergency delivery, can be worth more than a month of checking.
5. The Friday report
The numbers that someone collects every week from the CRM, accounting and a few spreadsheets are pulled automatically and sent as one email, or shown on a live dashboard. Typical build: €1,800–2,400 for a scheduled report from two or three sources.
Pays back in under three months if the report takes about 8.5 to 11 hours of work a week across everyone involved. That sounds like a lot until you count the people who send their numbers to the person who builds it.
The five side by side
Illustrative. Hours a month needed for a payback under three months at €16.29/h. Halve the volume and the payback doubles to about six months, which is still a good return.
To see what one of these is really worth to you, count the hours first. What one freed hour is worth explains when to value them at staff cost and when at more.
Before you build any of them
You have counted how many times a month the task happens and how long it takes.
You have multiplied by your own hourly cost, not a guess.
The rules are clear enough to write down, and exceptions have a review queue.
Failures send an alert to a person instead of failing quietly.
You know who owns the automation once it is live.
There is a date to measure the hours saved after the first month.
