The quiet cost
The job nobody
invoices you for.
A two-hour weekly task, done by someone worth R350 an hour. Nobody bills you for it, so nobody counts it. Here is what it costs over a year.
Recovered in year one
R0
That is 0 working days a year back, for the person it lands on.
Four taps, about thirty seconds. No form until the end.
Or skip it and just book a callThe small print
The rate. Loaded cost — salary plus UIF, SDL, COIDA and overhead — not take-home pay. Derived as monthly salary × 12, ×1.25 employer loading, ÷ 1,840 working hours a year. That gives roughly R120 an hour for admin or clerical, R285 for a manager or supervisor, R490 for an owner or director, and R250 where it is a mix. The 1.15–1.35 loading range is the published employer-cost multiplier for South Africa; salary inputs are sector medians and vary widely, so treat every one of these as an order of magnitude, not a payslip.
The year. 46 working weeks, not 52. Leave, public holidays and the weeks nobody gets anything done.
The figure. Hours a week × the rate × the number of people × 46 weeks. Back of an envelope, not a quote.
The 15 minutes. An assumption about what this kind of job usually reduces to, not a promise about yours. It assumes one person spot-checking afterwards rather than everyone, which is why the saving grows with headcount. Some go to zero. Some are not worth touching, and I will say so.
What is not in here. No inflation, no interest on what you keep, and no cost for building the fix. Those belong in a real quote, after I have watched the job happen once.