What an hour of downtime really costs
When systems go down, everyone feels it immediately but nobody can say what it costs. A simple estimate turns a vague worry into a number you can use to make better decisions about support, backup, and internet reliability.
A simple formula
Add up these three pieces for one hour of downtime:
- Lost revenue. What you normally earn in an hour that you cannot earn while systems are down. For a clinic or shop, this might be appointments or sales. For an office, it may be delayed billing.
- Idle payroll. The hourly cost of every employee who cannot work effectively. Multiply the number of affected staff by their loaded hourly cost.
- Recovery effort. Time spent by your team and your provider restoring service and catching up afterward.
Do not forget the soft costs
Some costs do not appear on a spreadsheet: customers who go elsewhere, staff frustration, missed deadlines, and leadership time spent firefighting. They are harder to price, but they are real, and they grow when outages repeat.
An example of the math
Imagine an office where twenty people each cost $40 an hour in payroll and benefits, and the business earns $1,500 in an average hour. One hour offline costs roughly $800 in idle payroll plus $1,500 in revenue, or $2,300, before recovery effort or soft costs. Your numbers will differ, but the exercise is the same.
Using the number
- Set the right support level. If an hour costs thousands, “next business day” support is a poor fit.
- Justify redundancy. A backup internet connection or a standby system suddenly looks inexpensive.
- Prioritize. Not every system deserves the same protection. Decide which ones the business cannot do without.
- Measure your provider. Ask for response and resolution times, and compare them to what an outage costs you.
Calculate your own figure once, write it down, and revisit it when your business changes. It makes every technology conversation more concrete.
Not sure where your business stands? Request a technology assessment.