No single number answers the question of what an AI connector is worth. What can be done: show where the time goes, give a worked example with open assumptions, and be straight about what is not included. After that you can run the numbers with your own figures.
Where does the time go?
Not into large projects, but into lookups. The tasks that seem too small to track, and that you therefore never track: checking whether an invoice was paid, checking how much stock is left, pulling together what is outstanding this month. Each one costs a few minutes, and they come back all day.
Those few minutes are made up of logging in, navigating to the right screen, setting a filter, reading the answer and returning to what you were doing. With a connector you ask in plain language and get the answer where you are already working. The difference per action is small; the number of actions is large.
The tasks that matter
Five actions that occur in almost every administration. The minutes are an estimate of the manual route in Exact Online against the same question through an assistant.
| Task | Manual | Through the connector | How often |
|---|---|---|---|
| Look up outstanding invoices for a customer | 3-5 min | < 1 min | daily |
| Check the stock level of an item | 2-4 min | < 1 min | several times a day |
| Build an overview of orders per customer | 5-10 min | 1-2 min | weekly |
| Compare revenue between periods | 10-20 min | 2-3 min | monthly |
| Prepare payment reminders | 20-40 min | 5-10 min | monthly |
Look at the last column. The two tasks with the biggest saving per occurrence happen once a month; the two smallest happen every day. Frequency therefore weighs more heavily than saving per action.
The worked example
Take a business where someone looks something up in Exact Online five times per working day, five minutes on average. That is the only assumption that matters, and you can replace it with your own.
| Manual | Through the connector | |
|---|---|---|
| Lookups per working day | 5 | 5 |
| Minutes each | 5 | 0.5 |
| Minutes per working day | 25 | 2.5 |
| Hours per month (21 working days) | 8.75 | 0.9 |
| Difference | roughly 7.9 hours per month | |
This is a worked example with explicit assumptions, not a measured average across customers. Replace five times a day with three and you land at just over 4.5 hours; replace it with ten and you are above 15. Same arithmetic, your numbers.
What that is worth
Put those hours next to the cost. Basic is 39 euro per month, Advanced 59 euro per month.
| Hourly rate | Value of 7.9 hours | Less Basic (39) | Less Advanced (59) |
|---|---|---|---|
| € 35 | € 277 | € 238 | € 218 |
| € 55 | € 435 | € 396 | € 376 |
| € 85 | € 672 | € 633 | € 613 |
At 7.9 hours a month, break-even sits around 5 euro per hour for Basic and around 7.50 euro for Advanced. Any realistic hourly rate is above that. So the question is not whether it pays back, but whether you actually make the saving — and that hangs entirely on how often you look things up.
Where the saving is not
Three things that are often missing from this kind of sum, and that belong on the cost side:
- Setup. Connecting takes a few minutes, but the first synchronisation of your administration takes longer, and you want to set permissions deliberately before colleagues join.
- Checking. In the first weeks you verify answers more often than later. That is part of the deal and should not be assumed away.
- Learning to ask. A vague question gets a vague answer. The prompt library helps, but there is a learning curve of a week or two.
And one thing that falls outside on principle: judgement stays human. The assistant retrieves data and lines it up. What it means and what you do about it stays with you and your adviser.
Running the numbers yourself
You need four numbers, and nothing else:
- How often per week do you look something up in Exact Online?
- How many minutes does that take now, from logging in to answer?
- How many minutes would it take if you could simply ask?
- What is the hourly rate of the person doing it?
Multiply 1 by (2 minus 3), divide by 60, multiply by 4.3 weeks and then by the hourly rate. If you end up below 39 euro a month, the connector is not worth it for that usage — and that is just as useful an answer.
Want to try before you calculate: the first 14 days are free. See the plans, the setup guide, or read what a connector costs in what does an AI connector for Exact Online cost.