Estimate revenue exposure and idle labor cost for an outage scenario. This is a planning estimate, not a verified accounting loss.
IT Downtime Cost Calculator
Estimate revenue exposure and idle labor cost during an outage.
Incident Cost Analysis
Estimated financial impact of the downtime event.
The calculator estimates the financial impact of an IT downtime event by combining lost revenue and employee productivity losses.
Lost revenue is calculated from annual revenue divided by annual operational hours, multiplied by the duration of the outage.
Lost productivity is calculated from the number of affected employees, their average hourly wage, and the duration of the downtime.
Worked example: a two-hour outage
Enter annual revenue of $1,040,000, 2,080 operating hours, 10 affected employees, an hourly wage of $30 and 2 hours of downtime. Revenue exposure is $1,040,000 ÷ 2,080 × 2 = $1,000. Idle labor is 10 × $30 × 2 = $600. Combined exposure is $1,600.
Interpret the result
The revenue estimate assumes activity is evenly distributed across operating hours and fully interrupted. Actual loss may be lower if orders are delayed rather than cancelled, or higher during peak demand. Use revenue for the affected operation rather than the whole company when only one service is interrupted.
Idle payroll is paid time affected by the outage, not automatically an additional cash expense. Adding payroll to revenue can double-count economic impact. Report both components separately and reconcile them with incident records before describing a final loss.
Choose your inputs
Use 2,080 hours for a 40-hour, 52-week operating year; 8,760 for continuous operation in a non-leap year; or your actual schedule. Count employees unable to work. People reassigned to useful tasks may not represent fully lost productivity.
Compare short and extended outages. For the example above, one hour produces $800 combined exposure and four hours produces $3,200. This linear model does not capture seasonal demand or cascading failures.
Record separately
SLA credits depend on contract terms and are not calculated here. Document recovery labor, replacement equipment, service credits and recovered sales separately. Keep the outage timeline and assumptions alongside your estimate.
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