The reporting time-tax calculator
Your tax, calculated
Live math on what the manual pipeline costs per year.
AgencyAnalytics at $20 per client/month billed annually — read from their pricing page on October 14, 2026. ReportSkills Plus at $19/month flat, unlimited clients and recipients. Time value is your hours × your rate, over twelve months.
The calculator is pure arithmetic in your browser: no cookies, no stored values, nothing sent anywhere.
How the math works
Three inputs, one multiplication, one comparison — deliberately unemotional.
The time bar: what the month really costs
Clients who expect a report, times the hours one manual report eats — export, paste, format, attach, chase — times your billable rate, over twelve months. Publishers we talk to report one to four hours per client; the slider starts at two because it is the honest middle. If the resulting figure makes you wince, the problem is the process, not the number.
The software bars: two pricing shapes
Per-client pricing grows with the roster by design — the green bar recalculates at $20 per client per month (verified 2026-10-14, check dates on our comparison page). The flat bar is one number no matter how many clients you add: Plus at $19/month, plus the AI tokens the commentary actually uses. Same chart, opposite directions.
Companion reading: how long a client report should take (where the hours hide) · how to show clients their retainer is working (what the freed hours should do) · reporting tools by charging meter · the template that makes the time bar shrink.
Frequently asked questions
How do I calculate the cost of client reporting?
Three numbers multiply into the real figure: clients who expect a report, hours each report spends on copy-paste-format-and-send, and your billable rate. Twelve clients × two hours × $75 is $1,800 a month of work nobody billed — $21,600 a year. The sliders above run exactly that math; nothing else belongs in the formula.
What is a fair hourly value for my reporting time?
Your own billable rate, not a discount for 'admin'. Reporting hours crowd out the client work you are actually paid for, and they land after hours more often than not. If you would never tell a client 'I will do this hour for a quarter of my rate', do not price the calculator that way either.
Is a free spreadsheet really costing anything?
The spreadsheet itself is free; the bar that matters is the rebuild. One hour per client per month on a manual pipeline is the conservative end of what publishers report — at twelve clients and a real billable rate, the 'free' workflow is the most expensive line in your year. The calculator puts that in the same picture as software pricing.
What does the comparison assume about ReportSkills?
The flat bar is Plus at $19 a month, billed monthly, unlimited clients and reports — plus whatever AI tokens the commentary actually uses, never a per-client or per-report counter. It assumes you still spend a few minutes a month pasting data and writing the story; the calculator does not credit you for the hours it deletes, it just puts the remaining cost on the same chart.
Done with the number? Delete the tax
The workspace runs the same month on a saved template: paste, review the story, press run.
Open the workspace