Time is money — but how much exactly?

For professionals juggling multiple responsibilities, precisely measuring productivity improvements remains a persistent challenge. You might feel more efficient after implementing new productivity apps and processes, but without concrete metrics, it’s impossible to quantify the actual value of these changes.

Zight’s Productivity Calculator solves this problem by converting abstract efficiency gains into tangible numbers to help you understand exactly how much time and money you’re saving with each workflow improvement.

What is this Productivity Calculator, and Why Use It?

In most cases, productivity is measured using a basic productivity formula: Productivity = Total Output / Total Input, which helps organizations determine how efficiently they’re converting resources (like time, labor, or materials) into valuable outputs (such as completed tasks, products, or services). Traditional productivity formulas focus on measuring overall output, like a QA inspector checking 800 bottle caps in eight hours.

However, Zight’s calculator focuses specifically on time savings and their monetary value. So, instead of just tracking what you produce, it helps you understand how much time and money you reclaim through efficiency improvements.

The calculator analyzes four key components:

• Your role-specific task volume
• The time saved per task
• Your work schedule
• Your compensation rate.

It then processes these inputs to deliver concrete metrics showing weekly time savings and their dollar value—transforming abstract efficiency feelings into actionable business intelligence.

How to Calculate Productivity with Zight Online

This is a simple platform that will give you detailed productivity reports. It is free, browser-based, and accessible via any device with an internet connection.

In the following sections, we will explore how this tool works using the available parameters. Specifically, we’ll use the example of a Marketing & Sales role and calculate productivity and how much we can save if we adopt new sales productivity tools that save time and money.

Note: You can select your role to understand your realistic operational efficiency.

Step 1: Select Your Role

Choose “Marketing & Sales” from the dropdown menu. This selection automatically populates role-specific default values to create a realistic starting point based on typical sales workflows. If you have ten tasks per day, and are now able to save five minutes per task, working five days a week, you can leave these inputs as they are. But, you want to change the hourly wage if you earn more or less than $25.

To continue this demonstration, we will change the inputs accordingly (you can do the same and use realistic values that complement your role and current processes):

Step 2: Update the Daily Tasks Completed

For starters, we can change the number of daily tasks from 10 to 15:

The thinking here can be simple — for our sales representative, these daily tasks include following up with prospects, scheduling demos, creating proposals, and maintaining client communications. Each task previously required extensive typing and multiple back-and-forth messages.

By now, they have started using Zight’s screenshot app, screen recorder, and GIF maker for online video marketing. They can create annotated screenshots of product features, record personalized demo videos, and instantly answer prospect questions with annotated GIFs demonstrating solutions. Thus, they have eliminated lengthy email chains and reduced miscommunication!

Step 3: Update the Time Saved Per Task

We can also change “time saved per task” from five to eight:

Since implementing Zight’s visual communication tools, the typical task completion time has dropped dramatically. Instead of writing paragraphs explaining a feature, our sales rep now records a 30-second video.

Rather than scheduling follow-up meetings to clarify questions, they send annotated screenshots with clear visual pointers. The ability to communicate visually has cut explanation time by nearly 40%!

Step 4: Confirm Your Work Week

When measuring our employee productivity, we will maintain the five-day work week (you can change yours accordingly.) In our case, our representative maintains a standard full-time schedule, ensuring calculations reflect typical availability.

Step 5: Add your Hourly Rate

In our example, we will change the hourly wage from $25 to $35. Our opinion is that this better represents the total compensation package of an experienced sales professional, including benefits and incentives. Of course, you can adapt the rate to capture your earnings accurately.

Step 6: Calculate and Analyze Your Results

Click the “Calculate” button to reveal your productivity metrics:

In our example, we end up with these figures:

• Time Saved Per Week: 600 minutes (10 hours)
• Estimated Value: $350 per week
• Monthly savings: $1,400
• Annual savings: $18,200

These results demonstrate that visual communication tools save our sales representative over 500 hours annually, translating to significant cost savings that far outweigh the investment in Zight’s platform.

Step 7: Apply Your Insights

Armed with concrete productivity metrics, you gain powerful capabilities to transform your professional life and organizational impact. As the key to achieving desired outcomes, you can use these productivity measurements to:

• Drive Data-Based Decision Making: With precise ROI calculations, you can confidently champion productivity tools that deliver measurable results and secure approval from even the most numbers-focused executives.
• Create Compelling Business Cases: When requesting resources for productivity improvements, a presentation showing “$18,200 annual productivity savings” carries substantially more weight than vague promises of “improved efficiency” using a standard productivity formula.
• Optimize Resource Allocation: Identify which workflow improvements deliver the highest returns. You can test different scenarios in the calculator, prioritize investments in tools that maximize your time-to-value ratio, and ensure resources go to the highest-impact areas first.
• Set Realistic Performance Goals: Rather than arbitrary productivity targets, establish benchmarks grounded in actual data. These metrics can inform realistic sales revenue goals, personal development plans, and organizational KPIs that inspire confidence and employee satisfaction.
• Quantify Professional Growth: Document your increasing value to the organization over time. Regular productivity calculations create a compelling narrative of your growing contribution to provide evidence for performance reviews, promotion discussions, and salary negotiations.
• Demonstrate Leadership Vision: Position yourself as a forward-thinking leader focused on measurable results for business performance. With such productivity improvements, you demonstrate the strategic thinking that distinguishes exceptional leaders from merely competent managers.

Wrapping Up

Numbers tell stories that feelings cannot. The Zight Productivity Calculator will help you translate your time savings into financial gains.

With a free tool and a few steps, you will take your productivity journey beyond guesswork — measure it precisely with Zight’s calculator, then explore how other visual communication tools can multiply these gains by streamlining collaboration and eliminating communication barriers.