Billing & finance · Starter
Your automation budget, with the scope attached
What automation actually costs.
Find a workflow like yours. See what the build covers. Add your running costs and leave with a budget you can discuss.
Based on Ops Automators’ own catalogue estimates. These are starting points for scoping, not final invoices or an independent market survey.
By Ops Automators · Methodology reviewed · USD
A real catalogue example
Refund Workflow
Issued refund updates CRM, notifies support, updates entitlement system.
View the source scope ↗Published build estimate$1,200–$2,4006–12 labor hours × $200/hour
Build Catalogue estimate
Run Your software, usage & support
Decide A brief with open questions
01 / Find a comparable scope
Start with the work you need done.
Explore 16 selected catalogue listings. Pick a close match to see its published build estimate and the questions that still need answers.
Have a build budget in mind?
Whole band: upper estimate ≤ budget. Crosses budget: lower estimate ≤ budget, upper estimate > budget. Neither is a guaranteed spending cap.
3 of 16 selected examples shown. These examples are editorial selections, not a representative sample.
Billing & finance · Workflow
Billing & finance · Orchestration
Your selected scope
Refund Workflow
Catalogue scope, quoted in full
Issued refund updates CRM, notifies support, updates entitlement system.
Systems listed: Not specified. Confirm the systems during scoping.
Check this catalogue listing- 01Refund issued
- 02Update records
- 03Notify support
Illustrative flow based on the description; confirm exact steps and review gates.
Before this becomes a quote
- How should a partial or failed refund change access?
- What volume, exceptions, and acceptance checks should the agreed scope cover?
These are our editorial scoping prompts, not additional included deliverables.
02 / Make room for running costs
A build price is the starting point.
Keep the catalogue estimate, then add costs from your own quotes or usage assumptions. The operating view covers a full 12 months after launch.
Build → Run
What will it take to keep this working?
The catalogue covers implementation labor. Software, usage, monitoring, maintenance, and your team’s time need their own budget decisions.
No suggested allowances are inserted.
Check existing subscriptions before adding new costs. Confirm the billing unit, expected volume, overages, support coverage, and who owns failures. See our pricing and support terms.
Budget range: $1,200 to $2,400.
Refund Workflow
Catalogue build estimate
$1,200– $2,400
Implementation labor only. Other costs excluded.
- Catalogue build
- $1,200–$2,400
The price band follows the selected listing’s tier. It is not adjusted by these inputs and is not a guaranteed ceiling. Unknown costs, tax, discounts, and bundles are not modeled.
03 / Leave with a usable brief
Bring the scope to the conversation.
Take your selected listing, comparisons, cost assumptions, unanswered questions, and source version with you. No email required.
Your brief includes entered amounts and notes. Review it before sharing. Printable HTML opens locally and supports Print / Save as PDF.
The details that need a scope decision.
Use these prompts to test whether a listing fits. They don’t calculate surcharges or predict a final quote.
Records and access
Can the same customer, invoice, or project be matched across systems? Who can grant the necessary access?
Approvals and exceptions
Who reviews the result? What happens when an approval is late, data is missing, or an action must be reversed?
Volume and ownership
How often will it run, what happens at peak volume, and who investigates failures after launch?
Check your existing tools’ native features first. If the process has no clear owner or success check, start with the requirements template. For a checklist of costs to confirm, read how to budget for automation.
The evidence / All 259 catalogue entries
Four bands. One published rate.
Every entry inherits its assigned tier’s hour and price band. Across this catalogue, the lowest lower estimate is $1,200 and the highest upper estimate is $40,000. That span describes the menu; it isn’t a quote for a particular workflow.
95 of 259 catalogue entries (36.7%) have an upper estimate at or below $6,000. Independently calculated median lower / upper estimates are $3,200–$8,000. These describe the catalogue mix, not a typical customer’s bill.
| Assigned tier | Entries | Share of catalogue | Labor hours | Build estimate (USD) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | 95 | 36.7% | 6–12 | $1,200–$2,400 |
| Workflow | 125 | 48.3% | 16–40 | $3,200–$8,000 |
| Orchestration | 37 | 14.3% | 40–90 | $8,000–$18,000 |
| Platform | 2 | 0.8% | 100–200 | $20,000–$40,000 |
Source: Ops Automators catalogue, version 6cf8ea323a8a. Shares count catalogue entries, not purchases. Rounding may keep displayed shares from totaling exactly 100%. Source data and citation.
The evidence / Category breakdown
Compare the work in each category.
Read the tier counts alongside the medians. A category with more complex entries will have a different price mix, but that doesn’t establish a category premium for equivalent work. Small categories can shift with a single listing.
S = Starter · M = Workflow · L = Orchestration · XL = Platform. Median columns pair the independently calculated lower and upper endpoints. On small screens, scroll the table horizontally.
| Category | Entries | S | M | L | XL | Median hours (low / high) | Median USD (low / high) | Full USD span |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Company Culture & Engagement | 7 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 6 / 12 | $1,200 / $2,400 | $1,200–$2,400 |
| Onboarding (Employee) | 10 | 5 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 11 / 26 | $2,200 / $5,200 | $1,200–$18,000 |
| Offboarding (Employee) | 8 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 11 / 26 | $2,200 / $5,200 | $1,200–$18,000 |
| HR & People Operations | 5 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 16 / 40 | $3,200 / $8,000 | $1,200–$8,000 |
| Recruiting & Talent Acquisition | 10 | 4 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 16 / 40 | $3,200 / $8,000 | $1,200–$8,000 |
| Sales Operations | 20 | 5 | 12 | 3 | 0 | 16 / 40 | $3,200 / $8,000 | $1,200–$18,000 |
| Marketing Operations | 10 | 5 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 11 / 26 | $2,200 / $5,200 | $1,200–$18,000 |
| Customer Success & Support | 24 | 10 | 12 | 2 | 0 | 16 / 40 | $3,200 / $8,000 | $1,200–$18,000 |
| Finance & Accounting | 20 | 5 | 8 | 7 | 0 | 16 / 40 | $3,200 / $8,000 | $1,200–$18,000 |
| Revenue Operations | 7 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 16 / 40 | $3,200 / $8,000 | $1,200–$40,000 |
| Project Management & Delivery | 20 | 9 | 7 | 4 | 0 | 16 / 40 | $3,200 / $8,000 | $1,200–$18,000 |
| Internal Communications | 6 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 11 / 26 | $2,200 / $5,200 | $1,200–$8,000 |
| Meetings & Calendar | 8 | 6 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 6 / 12 | $1,200 / $2,400 | $1,200–$8,000 |
| Documents & Contracts | 6 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 11 / 26 | $2,200 / $5,200 | $1,200–$18,000 |
| IT & Security Operations | 17 | 4 | 11 | 2 | 0 | 16 / 40 | $3,200 / $8,000 | $1,200–$18,000 |
| Data Hygiene & Governance | 7 | 4 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 6 / 12 | $1,200 / $2,400 | $1,200–$8,000 |
| Procurement & Vendor Mgmt | 7 | 0 | 6 | 1 | 0 | 16 / 40 | $3,200 / $8,000 | $3,200–$18,000 |
| Executive & Board Reporting | 4 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 16 / 40 | $3,200 / $8,000 | $3,200–$18,000 |
| Legal & Compliance | 7 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 16 / 40 | $3,200 / $8,000 | $1,200–$18,000 |
| Learning & Development | 5 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 6 / 12 | $1,200 / $2,400 | $1,200–$8,000 |
| Partner & Channel Ops | 7 | 0 | 5 | 2 | 0 | 16 / 40 | $3,200 / $8,000 | $3,200–$18,000 |
| Product Operations | 5 | 1 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 16 / 40 | $3,200 / $8,000 | $1,200–$8,000 |
| AI Automations | 11 | 1 | 8 | 1 | 1 | 16 / 40 | $3,200 / $8,000 | $1,200–$40,000 |
| Business Intelligence & Reporting | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 11 / 26 | $2,200 / $5,200 | $1,200–$18,000 |
| Event & Community Ops | 6 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 6 / 12 | $1,200 / $2,400 | $1,200–$8,000 |
| Executive Personal Productivity | 3 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 40 / 90 | $8,000 / $18,000 | $3,200–$18,000 |
| Healthcare & HIPAA-Aware Ops | 8 | 1 | 5 | 2 | 0 | 16 / 40 | $3,200 / $8,000 | $1,200–$18,000 |
| Integration Foundations & Plumbing | 7 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 16 / 40 | $3,200 / $8,000 | $1,200–$18,000 |
Source: Ops Automators catalogue, version 6cf8ea323a8a. The full span runs from the smallest lower estimate to the largest upper estimate in each category. Prices between tier bands may be absent. Source data and citation.
The evidence / Methodology and limitations
A catalogue census, with its limits in view.
What’s included
All 259 entries in the catalogue shipped with this site, across 28 categories. Nothing is sampled or dropped. Integration Foundations & Plumbing is included because those entries remain in the catalogue data.
Each category-and-name pair counts once. Entries have equal weight, including related or overlapping patterns. We don’t weight them by sales, popularity, project size, or how often we’ve built them.
Where prices and hours come from
Each entry’s assigned tier comes from its item-name override, when present, then its category default, with Workflow as the fallback. The tier supplies the estimated implementation labor hours. Both price endpoints are those hours multiplied by $200.
Labor hours aren’t elapsed delivery time or hours a customer will save. Entries in the same tier share the same band; these aren’t independently measured project costs.
How the tables are calculated
For each median, sort the lower endpoints and the upper endpoints separately. Take the middle value in each list. For an even number of entries, average the two middle values. An even-count median can fall between tiers.
We don’t turn each band into a midpoint price. Shares are entry counts divided by 259, shown to one decimal place. The $6,000 threshold counts only entries whose upper estimate is at or below that amount, including equality.
What this cannot tell you
This is our service menu, selected and priced by Ops Automators. It isn’t a representative sample of the market, a record of completed engagements, or evidence of what customers typically pay.
It contains no measured savings, ROI, payback periods, or delivery success rates. Category differences describe the mix of listed work. They don’t establish that one department costs more to automate under an equivalent scope.
How the planning tool works
The explorer selects 16 examples to cover six practical outcomes and all four tiers. These editorial groupings are separate from the catalogue categories. The examples are not a statistical sample. Descriptions and price bands come directly from the source records; the simplified flows and scoping questions are editorial aids.
The operating view adds 12 times each monthly cash assumption and any one-time extras to both build endpoints. Blank fields remain unknown and produce an incomplete subtotal. Explicit zero means no expected cost. Internal time is calculated separately as (setup hours + 12 × monthly operating hours) × hourly value. Calculations use integer cents, with internal time value rounded to the nearest cent. Bars use the same dollar scale and show endpoints, not confidence intervals.
The budget filter compares your amount against listed endpoints only; it does not assess feasibility. Comparisons are separate scopes and are never summed into a package. Entered values and notes stay in page memory, reset when you reload, and enter only the brief you choose to download. Scope share links and contact links carry the public listing only.
The evidence / Check the source
Take the source data with you.
The evidence tables and source downloads use the same catalogue records and pricing rules. Personal planning briefs are separate and contain your assumptions. CSV includes every entry’s scope description, systems where specified, category, assigned tier, hour and price endpoints, rate, and source link. JSON adds the aggregates and methodology. No email required.
Download all 259 rows (CSV)Download data and calculations (JSON)Download methodology and field dictionary (TXT)Browse the source catalogue
Field dictionary and reproduction notes
To reproduce the tables, group the exported rows by tier or category. Count the rows, then calculate medians for lower and upper endpoints separately using the method above. Each field below names its JSON equivalent where it differs. Empty systems fields mean the catalogue didn’t specify them.
- dataset_version
- SHA-256 of JSON.stringify({ methodology: json.methodologyVersion, rows: json.rows }); identifies rows and methodology, not a collection date.
- methodology_version
- Version of the calculation and export definitions.
- id
- Category ID and catalogue name joined by a colon. One equally weighted observation per pair.
- name
- Catalogue entry name, unchanged from the local source.
- category_id
- Catalogue category ID (categoryId in JSON rows).
- category
- Catalogue category label (categoryName in JSON rows).
- tier
- Assigned tier code: S, M, L, or XL. Item-name override, then category default, then Workflow fallback.
- tier_label
- Published tier name (tierLabel in JSON rows).
- hours_low
- Lower estimated implementation labor hours for the assigned tier (hoursLow in JSON).
- hours_high
- Upper estimated implementation labor hours for the assigned tier (hoursHigh in JSON). Not elapsed delivery time.
- price_low
- hours_low multiplied by hourly_rate (priceLow in JSON). An estimate, not a paid price.
- price_high
- hours_high multiplied by hourly_rate (priceHigh in JSON). An estimate, not a guaranteed ceiling.
- currency
- USD for all price endpoints and the hourly rate.
- hourly_rate
- Published implementation labor rate in USD per hour (hourlyRate in JSON).
- source_url
- Public catalogue filtered by category and exact name search (sourceUrl in JSON).
- description
- Scope description copied from the catalogue. It describes listed work, not a verified delivery outcome.
- systems
- Systems text copied from the catalogue when supplied. Empty means unspecified, not no systems required.
CSV quotes all fields and doubles embedded quotes. Formula-leading text gets a protective apostrophe; JSON preserves the original strings. Use JSON rows to reproduce the fingerprint.
Dataset license and citation
The benchmark dataset, including the evidence tables and CSV/JSON downloads, is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). You may share and adapt it, including commercially, with credit to Ops Automators, a link to the license, and an indication of any changes. This license applies to the dataset; it does not cover our website code, branding, or client deliverables.
Ops Automators. “What Automation Actually Costs.” Current catalogue edition, dataset version 6cf8ea323a8a21a4df8551364c23996c9144d4da58ea2813518f6c0e2a8269b5. Methodology v1.1, reviewed September 15, 2026. https://www.opsautomators.com/automation-cost-benchmark. Include your access date and retain the CSV or JSON when citing a figure.
This page follows the catalogue shipped with the site. The dataset version is a SHA-256 fingerprint of the exported rows and methodology version, so changes produce a different identifier. The review date describes the methodology, not when projects were delivered or when prices were observed. This URL isn’t an archive of previous editions.
Found a category that fits? Open the listings to compare the actual scope behind each band.
Explore the catalogue