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Workflow Effort Planner — Time, Bottleneck & SOP Calculator

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Free access lets you build a workflow with up to 10 steps and see every calculation, ranking and suggestion on screen — full functionality, no feature limits. Full access removes the 10-step cap and unlocks the printable report, the SOP checklist export, and a downloadable offline copy of the tool.

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About the Workflow Effort Planner

The Workflow Effort Planner is a browser-based time audit for anyone who does the same job over and over — packing orders, running a workshop job from quote to invoice, processing invoices, or onboarding a new starter. You lay out each step the job actually takes, and the tool works out where your hours are really going, which steps are quietly turning into bottlenecks, and where the genuine risk sits — the stuff that only works because one person remembers how to do it.

Most business owners can feel that a process is slow or fragile without being able to say exactly why. This tool makes the "why" concrete: a total time per job, a weekly and monthly figure you can actually plan around, a ranked list of your biggest time sinks, and a separate ranked list of your real bottlenecks — because those two things are rarely the same task.

Common uses

How to use it

  1. Name your workflow and set how many times it runs each week
  2. Add each step: the time it takes, who does it, how often, any wait time after it, and its difficulty and risk level
  3. Flag which steps could be batched, delegated, or automated — and which ones aren't documented anywhere yet
  4. Check the totals, the bottleneck ranking, and the risk list to see what's really costing you time
  5. Export the printable report and SOP checklist once you're ready to act on it

Frequently asked questions

How do I calculate the total time a workflow takes?

Add every step with its time and how often it happens. Steps marked "per job" get added up into a total time per job. Daily, weekly and monthly steps are converted into a weekly and monthly total alongside that, based on how many times the whole job runs and how many days you work.

What's the difference between a bottleneck and a time-consuming task?

A time-consuming task takes a lot of hands-on effort. A bottleneck is a step that holds everything else up, usually because of waiting — a supplier lead time, a client approval, a courier pickup — even if the actual work involved is quick. This tool ranks both separately so you can see which one is really costing you.

Is the Workflow Effort Planner free to use?

Yes. You can build a workflow with up to 10 steps and see every calculation, ranking and suggestion completely free. A one-time payment removes the 10-step limit and unlocks the printable report, the SOP checklist export, and a downloadable offline copy of the tool.

Can I use this if I'm a one-person business?

Yes — a lot of solo sellers and freelancers use it on themselves, to see where their own week is actually going and what's worth batching, automating, or just dropping.