Developed and maintained by ProWorkstack · Development and review process
Compare ongoing technical debt maintenance effort with a fixes budget, including captured time value and simple payback.
Your results
Enter your inputs and select Calculate.
How this calculator works
Freed up hours = current maintenance hours − expected post-fixes hours. Ongoing captured net benefit = freed up hours × total hourly cost × capture fraction − added monthly platform costs. One-time budget = fixes hours × total hourly cost + other one-time costs. First-year benefit = 12 × ongoing benefit − one-time budget. Simple payback uses positive ongoing net benefit.Worked example
Maintenance falls from 80 to 30 hours per month, releasing 50. At 75 per hour and 60% capture, that represents 2,250 monthly value. Subtract 200 ongoing costs for 2,050 net benefit. Fixes takes 120 hours at 75 plus 1,000 other costs: 10,000 total. First-year benefit is 14,600; simple payback is 4.88 months.Assumptions
Defaults illustrate the arithmetic, not market prices or expected performance. Use measured quantities and documented costs. All monetary inputs must use the same currency.Interpreting your results
This is an effort-and-cost scenario, not an interest-rate forecast or a codebase audit. Time freed up is not automatically cash saved. It excludes risk reduction, future revenue, discounting and implementation ramp-up. Benefits start immediately in the simple first-year model; use a separate monthly schedule if rollout is gradual.Calculation formulas
- released
hours_now-hours_after- benefit
released*rate*capture/100-extra_monthly- setup
project_hours*rate+project_cash- year_net
benefit*12-setup- First-year value after fixing costs
year_net- Monthly value after added costs
benefit- Maintenance hours saved
released- One-time fixing budget
setup- Time to recover fixing costs
SAFE_DIV(setup,benefit,0)- Value of current maintenance time
hours_now*rate
Frequently asked questions
Can I use a different currency?
Yes. Choose your currency and enter every monetary amount in that currency. No exchange-rate conversion is performed.
Where should my assumptions come from?
Use your own matched operational records, invoices, agreements and measured task times. The worked example explains the calculation and is not a benchmark.
Maintained by ProWorkstack · Last reviewed: 2026-10-04 · Development and review process