Meeting Cost Calculator

Every meeting carries a price tag that rarely shows up on any invoice, yet it draws directly from payroll. By combining attendee salaries with the time spent in the room, this tool turns that invisible drain into a concrete dollar figure. Seeing the total in advance gives teams a real basis for trimming the calendar.

The math runs in stages. The attendees' average annual salary is divided by 2,080 working hours, the product of 52 weeks at 40 hours, to yield an hourly rate. That rate is multiplied by the length of the meeting in hours and by the number of people attending. The tool also shows the cost per minute and per attendee, and what the meeting adds up to over a year if it is held weekly (52 sessions); for any other schedule, multiply the per-session total by the number of sessions.

Short, frequent meetings are where the surprises hide. Thirty minutes with a handful of well-paid people stacks up far faster than most managers expect once it lands on the calendar week after week. Count everyone who actually sits in, not only the people doing the talking, since silent participants cost exactly as much as anyone else. Treat the figure here as the direct labor cost alone; the work that went undone during the meeting is a separate, often larger, expense worth weighing.