Conservative, editable, no email gate. This calculator models the three places a mid-market 3PL typically sees measurable return on a WMS swap — mispick reduction, picker productivity, and billing leakage recovery — and subtracts your all-in WMS spend to land on a net annual benefit and payback period. Replace every default with your own number before showing this to your CFO.
Your inputs
Your conservative annual picture
How the math works
Mispick savings = orders per year × (current mispick rate − target mispick rate) × cost per mispick. Picker productivity savings = picker count × 2,080 hours × productivity gain × hourly wage. Billing recovery = monthly billable revenue × 12 × billing leakage percentage. Payback = annual WMS spend ÷ monthly gross benefit, rounded up.
None of this is magic. It is a sanity check to frame the conversation. Every one of these inputs should be replaced with a number you can defend from your own operation before you take it to your CFO.
Frequently asked questions
Where do the default numbers come from?
The defaults reflect conservative mid-market 3PL patterns we have seen over 30 years of WMS deployments — a 15,000-order-per-month operator with 14 pickers, a 1.5 percent mispick rate, and 2.5 percent billing leakage. They are a starting point to keep the calculator useful. Replace every one of them with your own numbers before you show this to a CFO.
Is an 18 percent picker productivity gain realistic?
For an operator moving from paper or spreadsheets to a modern WMS with directed picking and voice or mobile scanning, 15–25 percent is a common range in published case studies. For an operator moving from one modern WMS to another, 5–10 percent is more typical. Adjust the field to match your starting point.
Does this include implementation cost?
The annual WMS spend field is where you enter your expected annual total cost of ownership. To include implementation, divide the one-time implementation cost over 3 years and add it to the annual subscription number. A CFO will still want to see both numbers separately — use this calculator for the recurring picture and a separate line for the first-year implementation.
What about revenue growth from new customers?
We deliberately left revenue growth out of the calculator. It is harder to defend in an ROI model and depends on sales capacity, market, and positioning — not just the WMS. If you want to add it, do it as a separate line with your own assumptions.
Who built this calculator?
The SC Codeworks team. We make a mid-market 3PL WMS, so we have an incentive to show favorable payback. The defaults here are deliberately conservative and the math is visible in the source so you can check it and override anything that does not match your operation.