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Free tool · Legacy systems

Downtime cost calculator

When the system your business runs on stops, sales stop and staff wait. Enter your own figures to estimate what each outage costs, and what that adds up to over a year.

Only the sales that depend on the system. The figures filled in are examples; replace them with yours.
Lower it if customers wait or come back later.
Pay plus employer contributions such as EPF and SOCSO, per hour.
Overtime to catch up, an emergency call-out, data re-entry.

Estimated cost

RM 0 a year

RM 0 per incident

Lost sales = RM 0/hour × 0 h × 0% = RM 0

Idle staff = 0 × RM 0/hour × 0 h = RM 0

Recovery = RM 0

Per year = RM 0 × 0 incidents

Sales per hour = sales per day ÷ trading hours.

An estimate from your own figures, not a forecast. It leaves out customers who don't come back and the damage to your reputation, which are often larger.

Outages that keep coming back usually have a cause that can be fixed. See how we stabilise legacy systems →

How this counts: cost per incident = sales per hour × hours down × share lost + staff × cost per staff hour × hours down + recovery cost; cost per year = cost per incident × incidents a year. Every number is yours, so the result is only as good as what you enter. A rough estimate, not financial advice. Checked on 23 October 2026. For how small failures turn into large costs, read the price of ignoring a small bug.

What this leaves out

The direct cost is the part you can count. The rest rarely shows up in the accounts: the regular customer who goes elsewhere, orders delivered late, records re-entered by hand, and the hours a manager spends calming things down. Outages also tend to grow. A system that needs a restart once a quarter today can need one every week in two years, if the cause is left alone. What happens when you delay maintenance walks through how that unfolds.

Common questions

How do I calculate the cost of downtime?
Add three things for each incident: the sales you lose while the system is down, the pay of staff who can't work, and any recovery cost such as overtime or an emergency fix. Multiply by the number of incidents a year. The calculator shows the formula with your numbers.
What doesn't this calculator count?
Customers who don't come back, damage to your reputation, late deliveries, data that has to be re-entered or corrected, and the management time spent dealing with it. These are often larger than the direct cost, but they are too specific to each business to estimate here.
Are all sales lost while the system is down?
Not always. Some customers wait or come back later. Lower the share of sales lost to reflect that. A shop with walk-in customers usually loses more than a supplier whose customers will reorder tomorrow.
I don't know how often we go down. What should I enter?
Count the times in the last year that staff couldn't use the system, including slow restarts and the morning nobody could log in. If nobody tracks this, start keeping a simple log; it is the first number anyone fixing the system will ask for.
How do I reduce downtime?
Fix the recurring problems behind it rather than restarting around them, test that backups actually restore, and know how long a recovery takes. Addressing warning signs on a schedule is cheaper than fixing a failure under pressure.
Next step Find out where the risk sits with the legacy system risk scorecard, or see how we stabilise legacy systems, starting with a free written assessment.