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Calculating exception-handling costs in automation
Short answer
The cost of exceptions is people's work on the cases an automation did not finish by itself: filling in data, retrying and checking the result. You count it per case, with all of its runs together. At 3,000 orders a month and 15% exceptions at 10 minutes each, that is 75 hours. A completeness check that lowers the share to 5% pays back in 1.7 months at a price of €3,000.
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- 01Call30 minutes with an engineer, free
- 02PrototypeA working system on your process and data, free
- 03ImplementationTarget and fixed price in the contract; 50% at signing
- 04Acceptance50% once the agreed target is met
- net for the automation of one process, build paid once
- from €3,000
- from signing the contract to acceptance
- 2–6 weeks
- free prototype on your cases
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Author: Syntalith · 3 min read
Statistics
Automation and exceptions: statistics 2026
75 h
a month go on exceptions at 3,000 orders, when 15% need 10 minutes of work. A drop to 5% gives back 50 hours, which is €1,745. Scenario.
90%
According to the European Commission (2026), 90% of EU companies that use AI say people take the decisions.
Source: European Commission, Flash Eurobarometer on AI (2026) ↗
40%
According to Gartner (2025), over 40% of agentic AI projects will be cancelled by the end of 2027 because of costs, unclear value or weak risk controls.
20.0%
According to Eurostat (2025), 20.0% of EU companies with at least 10 employees used AI.
50%
According to the European Commission (2026), half of EU SMEs and mid-caps name high investment costs as a barrier to AI.
Source: European Commission, Flash Eurobarometer on AI (2026) ↗
Figures checked: 22 October 2026
A retry does not create a new case
An order from the portal stops on incomplete data. An employee writes to the account manager, adds the information and retries the handover. After another error she comes back once more. The technical history has several attempts, while for the team it is one case with several interventions.
- 01StopThe automation stops the order because data is missing.
- 02ClarificationThe employee contacts the account manager.
- 03RetryShe adds the information and retries the handover.
- 04Second errorA different reason for the stop, another return to the case.
- 05CloseThe report counts all the work on one order.
The report gathers the effort on the shared order and shows the attempts one after another. Otherwise the number of handled cases grows with every retry, and the hard cases disappear into the average. The reason for the first stop can differ from the next one, so grouping by the last error is not enough.
Working time is different from waiting time
An order may have waited overnight for a reply, while the employee spent a few minutes on it. The gap between events in the system does not give you her working time. If the company does not record it, the report shows a gap or an estimate agreed with the team. Without this distinction a case that waited a day looks the most expensive, although it took five minutes of work.
What exceptions cost
- Exceptions today
- 3,000 × 15% = 450 cases × 10 min = 75 h (€2,618)
- After a completeness check
- 3,000 × 5% = 150 cases × 10 min = 25 h
- Time given back
- 50 h (€1,745) a month
Payback of a €3,000 fix
1.7 months
The volume, the share of exceptions and the handling time are the scenario's assumptions, which we check against the order history. €34.90 an hour is the EU average hourly labour cost for 2025 according to Eurostat. A cash saving appears when the company cuts real spending, for example overtime.
In the count, also write down whether the result covers only day-to-day handling, or also the analysis and repair of the automation itself. Mixing the two without a note makes it hard to compare one month with the next. The manager also needs the distribution. The same number of exceptions can mean many short fixes or a few long negotiations. A view of individual cases lets you check where the result comes from before you choose a change.
What the tools already show
Microsoft Power Automate Process Mining has rework metrics, including direct repetitions and returns after other steps (rework metrics documentation). If your current tool shows repetitions on the same case, use that view. A separate connection is needed when interventions stay in tickets, messages or timesheets outside the process history.
Repetitions in the process history
a process mining tool
an existing view
Interventions in tickets and emails
sources joined in a report
from €3,000
Free-text descriptions of interventions
AI sorts the topics, with the original beside them
from €3,000
Order a report that helps you choose the fix
The first scope covers one automation and a chosen period, usually the last quarter. The client points to the places where employees record interventions and agrees what goes into the count. Syntalith links the attempts to real cases and prepares an effort report, as described for reporting automation. For the first conversation, one case is enough: one the automation finished and the team handled several times.
