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We will not tell you what this saves you.

Everybody else leads with a savings figure. Here are the three sums we use instead, the range we put around them, and why we will not publish a fourth.

Written 14 September 2026Updated 2 October 2026Six minutes to read

3sums: repetition, waiting and checking. Every figure we give you comes from one of them.

Yoursare the inputs. Nobody has averages for your business, so the numbers going in are always yours.

±40%is the range we put around every estimate. One number suggests a precision that is not there.

0saving claims. We have not measured a year of before and after, so we do not publish one.

Three sums, and you can do them all on paper.

There is no model here you cannot check. That is on purpose. A number you cannot rebuild yourself is a number you should not act on.

Repetition

How often a thing happens. Times how many places it has to be done. Times the minutes each one takes.

events × places × minutes ÷ 60

Waiting

How many things sit written but unsent. Times how long they sit. Times what a day of waiting costs you.

items × days waiting × cost of a day

Checking

How many things get checked against a standard. Times the minutes to check one. Times how often you go round again.

items × minutes × passes ÷ 60

Then, money

The hours, times the full cost of whoever does the work. Not their salary divided by 2,080. What they really cost you.

hours × loaded rate

That is the whole method. Every number we give you comes out of one of those four lines, and you can change any input and watch the answer move.

A single number is a guess with a decimal point.

Ask an owner how long something takes and you will get a number. Ask again next week and you will get a different one. Neither answer is dishonest. Nobody is holding a stopwatch, and the honest answer is always a range.

So we show the range. Every estimate we make moves all of your inputs up by 40% and down by 40% at the same time, and shows you all three answers. Low, likely and high.

If the decision changes between the low number and the high one, you did not have a decision. You had a guess with good formatting.

That is what the band is for. It tells you whether the answer holds. If the whole range is worth acting on, act. If only the high end is, be careful. The high end is where the wishful thinking lives.

Why there is no time-saving figure on this site.

The fourth sum is the one everybody wants. Take the hours, times the share the software handles, and publish the answer. It would take us a minute to put a big number on the homepage.

We would be making up the middle term. We have not measured a year of before and after in somebody’s business. Any percentage we picked would be one we chose because it looked good.

So where that term shows up in our sums, it is yours to set, and it is labelled as yours. When we have measured it properly, we will publish what we measured and say how.

Three questions to ask any supplier.

Including us. If a supplier cannot answer all three in a sentence each, the number is decoration.

Where did that number come from? Not the source. The arithmetic. Which two or three things were multiplied to make it.
Which of those did you measure, and which did you assume? Every model has guesses in it. The question is whether they are labelled. If they are buried, that is your answer.
What does it look like if you are wrong by half? Halve it and see what is left. If the pitch only works at the full number, you are being sold the best case, not the likely one.

We wrote these down because we want to be held to them too. If a number on this site fails one, tell us and we will take it down.

Questions

How does Merytt work out what a problem costs?

Three sums. Repetition: how often a thing happens, times how many places it has to be done, times the minutes each takes. Waiting: how many things sit written but unsent, times how long they sit, times what a day of waiting costs. Checking: how many things get checked, times the minutes to check one, times how often you go round again. Then the hours, times the full cost of whoever does the work.

Why does Merytt not publish a time-saving figure?

Because we have not measured a year of before and after in a client’s business. Any percentage we picked would be one we chose because it looked good. Where that term appears in our sums, it is the reader’s own input, labelled as theirs.

What is the range around a Merytt estimate?

Every estimate moves all the inputs up by 40 percent and down by 40 percent at the same time, and shows low, likely and high. If the decision changes between the low number and the high one, the answer is not solid enough to act on.