What you lose by sending reminders manually

Every manually sent reminder has a labor cost that many businesses don’t calculate. When you do the math with real salaries, the savings from automating are impossible to ignore.

Let’s do real calculations, without exaggerations, to see how much it really costs to dedicate human time to tasks that can be automated.

The experiment: let’s calculate the real cost

Imagine a typical business that needs to send reminders to its clients: a dental clinic, a beauty salon, a law firm, a consultancy, a real estate agency.

Initial note on calculations: To be conservative and demonstrate that even in the most economical scenario the numbers work, we’ll start from the lowest possible labor cost (equivalent to the legal minimum plus social security contributions). Then we’ll see more realistic scenarios with typical salaries in the administrative sector.

Scenario 1: Small business (80 reminders/month)

Manual method:

• 80 reminders per month
• Time per reminder: 2 minutes (find contact, write message, send, confirm)
• Total time: 160 minutes/month = 2.67 hours/month

Minimum labor cost: With the lowest possible cost (base salary + Social Security ≈ €1,540/month):

• Cost per hour: €9.63
• Cost of sending reminders: 2.67 hours × €9.63 = €25.71/month

Realistic labor cost: With a typical administrative assistant salary (€1,400 net + SS ≈ €1,820/month):

• Cost per hour: €11.38
• Cost of sending reminders: 2.67 hours × €11.38 = €30.38/month

Cost with Notifycal: €16/month

Monthly savings: Between €9.71 and €14.38 Annual savings: Between €116.52 and €172.56

Scenario 2: Medium business (300 reminders/month)

Manual method:

• 300 reminders per month
• Total time: 600 minutes/month = 10 hours/month

Realistic labor cost: With typical salary (€11.38/hour):

• 10 hours × €11.38 = €113.80/month

Cost with Notifycal: €44/month

Monthly savings: €69.80 Annual savings: €837.60

Even in the minimum cost scenario (€9.63/hour), the savings would be €627.60 annually.

Scenario 3: Large business (1,200 reminders/month)

Manual method:

• 1,200 reminders per month
• Total time: 2,400 minutes/month = 40 hours/month

Here we’re talking about almost a full-time person dedicated exclusively to sending reminders.

Realistic labor cost: With typical salary (€11.38/hour):

• 40 hours × €11.38 = €455.20/month

Cost with Notifycal: €99/month

Monthly savings: €356.20 Annual savings: €4,274.40

And this without counting that this person would need vacations, could get sick, would have absences… With Notifycal, the service runs 365 days a year without exceptions.

But the savings are not only economic

The numbers are clear, but there’s something more important than money: the opportunity cost.

What could your team do with those hours?

In the small scenario, we free up 2.67 hours per month. It seems little, but it’s almost 32 hours per year. A complete work week.

In the large scenario, it’s 40 hours per month. A full-time person dedicated exclusively to sending reminders.

What happens when you free up those hours?

Your team can:

• Better serve the customers you already have
• Make calls to attract new clients
• Improve internal processes
• Train on new tools
• Work on business strategy
• Take a breather and work less stressed

The human factor

Sending reminders is a repetitive, predictable, and let’s be honest, not very motivating task. Nobody studied to dedicate their day to copying and pasting messages.

Automating these tasks doesn’t just save money. It also:

1. Reduces team burnout: Repetitive tasks are one of the main causes of job dissatisfaction
2. Improves retention: An employee doing interesting and valuable work is an employee who stays
3. Eliminates errors: Humans forget, make mistakes, have bad days. Automated systems don’t
4. Frees talent: Every person on your team has unique skills. Using them for automatic tasks is wasting them

Freeing your team from mechanical tasks is not just efficiency. It’s also a way of telling them: “Your time is worth more than this.”

The “I don’t have budget” paradox

It’s curious. Many businesses say “I don’t have budget to automate,” while paying month after month the cost of doing things manually.

In the medium scenario, you’re paying €96.30/month (with minimum wage) to do something that can cost €44/month. And you don’t see those €52.30 difference as an expense because “it’s already in payroll.”

But here’s the trick: that time has a cost, whether you see it or not. And every month you don’t automate is a month you’re overpaying.

What if the reminders fail?

Here’s another hidden cost: absences due to unsent reminders.

If you send reminders manually:

• You can forget (especially on complicated days)
• You can mix up clients
• You can send the reminder at the wrong time
• You don’t have traceability of what was sent and what wasn’t

Every appointment lost due to an unsent reminder has a direct cost: the service that wasn’t provided, the slot that remained empty, the client who might not return.

With Notifycal, the system works 24/7. No forgetting, no errors, no exceptions. Reminders are sent exactly 24 hours before, always.

The final count

Let’s go back to the numbers. Let’s compare the three scenarios in a year with typical market salaries:

Calculations based on labor cost of €11.38/hour (typical administrative salary + social security contributions)

And remember: this is only the direct cost of time. We’re not counting:

• Employee vacations and absences
• Errors and oversights
• Appointments lost due to unsent reminders
• Training and supervision time

But beyond direct savings, think about this:

• How much is it worth for your team to be less stressed?
• How much is it worth not to lose appointments due to forgotten reminders?
• How much is it worth for your staff to dedicate themselves to what really adds value?
• How much is it worth to have a more motivated person?

Those things are priceless. Or rather: they have an invisible price you pay every day.

Automating is not an expense, it’s an investment

When you look at the numbers with perspective, the question is not “can I afford to automate?”.

The question is: “can I afford NOT to automate?”

Every hour you dedicate to tasks that a machine can do for you is an hour you’re not dedicating to growing your business. And in a world where time is the scarcest resource, automating repetitive tasks is not a luxury.

It’s a necessity.

Want to calculate how much you can save in your specific case?

Write to us and we’ll help you do the math with your volume of reminders. No commitment, no fine print. Just real numbers so you can make the best decision for your business.