Find out if an AI use case actually pays for itself
A free Excel calculator that does honest math on AI: hours saved against the full cost of tools, setup and ongoing management, so you pick a real win, not a shiny one.
A free Excel calculator with honest math on AI use cases. Weigh hours saved against tool, setup and management costs to find a payback period worth pursuing.
What you'll get
A practical, ready-to-use resource you fill in with your own numbers and keep. No expiring trial, no strings.
What the AI ROI Calculator does
The pitch for an AI tool is always the same: it will save your team hours. Maybe it will. But the sticker price is rarely the real cost, and the time saved is rarely as clean as the demo suggests. Once you add setup, integration, the months of tuning, and the fact that someone still has to check the work, a use case that looked obvious can stop making sense, while a quieter one turns out to be the real win.
This workbook gives you the honest math. You list candidate workflows, enter what they cost you today and what an AI approach would cost to run, and it shows you net ROI, payback period, and which use case to start with.
Count the whole cost
Subscription plus setup and integration plus ongoing management, with a realistic integration factor built in. The costs vendors leave off the quote are already line items here.
Pick your first win
A value-versus-feasibility ranking helps you choose one high-impact use case to start with, instead of spreading a small budget across five experiments that go nowhere.
See the payback period
Enter hours spent, fully-loaded cost and volume, and the workbook computes net ROI and how long until a use case actually pays for itself. Honest math, no inflated savings.
Built for human-in-the-loop work
The model assumes a person still reviews the output, so your savings estimate reflects AI assisting your team, not replacing it. The numbers stay realistic on purpose.
What is inside the workbook
- A use-case inventory where you list candidate workflows, such as ticket triage, invoice handling, intake or scheduling
- Per-use-case inputs for hours per week, fully-loaded hourly cost, rework cost and volume
- A complete cost side: tool or subscription, setup and integration with a realistic added-cost factor, and ongoing management
- Net ROI and payback period computed for each use case
- A value-versus-feasibility ranking to help you choose the first win
- A buy-versus-build toggle so you can compare an off-the-shelf tool against a custom build
Honest inputs, honest answers
Want the cost background first?
Before you fill in the numbers, it helps to know the going rates. Our article on what AI agents actually cost a small business lays out realistic pricing without the hype. For the bigger picture on adopting AI the human-centered way, see our Managed Intelligence hub.
How it works
Tell us where to send it
Fill in the short form. Just enough so we know who we're helping and can tailor any follow-up, only if you want it.
Check your inbox
We email your copy right away, and the download is yours to keep. No expiring trial, no login.
Put it to work
Use it on your own, or ask us for a second set of eyes. No pressure either way.
We do not sell your information
You get the file and an email copy for later. That is it. No third-party sharing, ever.
Real local humans built this
Vicinity is a genuinely local IT provider with people in Alaska and Hawaii. We help businesses pick AI use cases that genuinely pay off.
No sales theater
The workbook is a working tool, not a brochure. Use it whether or not we ever talk.