A meeting cost counter is only as honest as its denominator. Ours divides monthly gross salary by 633,600, which is 22 working days times 8 hours times 3,600 seconds. This article walks through every number the tool derives from that constant, including one multiplier the interface stops showing you.
The formula
Per-second cost for one person equals gross monthly salary divided by 633,600. The running total multiplies that by the attendee count and by elapsed seconds. The salary field accepts a comma or a dot as the decimal separator and treats unparsable input as zero, so a cleared field burns nothing.
Below the salary field, the tool shows cost per minute, the per-second rate times 60 times attendees. That row updates the moment you change salary or headcount, before you ever start the timer.
The display splits elapsed time into hours, minutes, and seconds, and the money figure refreshes on every tick. The total derives from current state, not from a rate stored at start, so changing salary or headcount mid-meeting takes effect on the next second. The reset button stops the clock and zeroes it, and the share button copies a one-line summary of duration and total to the clipboard.
What the defaults burn
With the shipped defaults of 25,000 gross and 5 attendees:
- Cost per minute: 11.84
- Hourly card: 710.23
- Daily card: 5,681.82, built on 28,800 seconds, a full 8-hour day of meetings
- Annual card: 1,500,000
The annual figure is clean by construction. The daily card multiplies the rate by 28,800, the annual card multiplies that by 22 and by 12, and 28,800 times 22 times 12 equals 633,600 times 12. The annual number therefore reduces to salary times attendees times 12. Five people at 25,000 who spend every working hour in meetings cost 1.5 million per year in salary alone.
One display note. The tool prefixes every total with the lira symbol in all languages and performs no currency conversion. Enter salary in the currency you actually pay people, and read the symbol as a unit marker rather than a fixed currency.
The hidden multiplier in restroom mode
The tool has two modes, Meeting Cost and Restroom Salary. In the code both branches multiply by the same attendee count, the conditional resolves to 1 on both sides. In restroom mode the attendee slider disappears from the interface, but its last value keeps multiplying the total.
Concretely: set attendees to 5 in meeting mode, switch to restroom mode, and enter your own salary. The per-minute figure is five times your personal rate, and nothing on screen tells you why. Set the slider back to 1 before switching modes, or the counter prices a solo break at a committee of five. That is a bug we have not fixed yet, and this paragraph is the documentation until we do.
What the model ignores
The formula uses gross salary only. Employer contributions, social security, office overhead, and taxes on top of gross all sit outside the model, so the real cost of an attendee runs higher than the display.
The denominator assumes 22 working days of 8 hours. Teams working longer months or different contracts drift from reality in proportion to the difference between their calendar and that assumption.
The timer is a one-second interval, and browsers throttle timers in background tabs. If you switch away during the meeting, the counter can undercount elapsed time. Keep the tab in the foreground, or recompute the total from the wall clock afterward using the per-minute figure.
Also absent from the model: preparation time, context switching after the meeting ends, and the cost of the work nobody did while everyone sat in the room. The counter measures attendance burn and nothing else.
The message thresholds
While the timer runs, the tool rotates through four status messages, one every 30 seconds of elapsed time. The messages branch at 50, 200, and 500 in the running total, moving from coffee commentary to the pizza line.
The thresholds tell you what the designer expected. At the default burn of 11.84 per minute, a total of 50 arrives in about four minutes, so the first tone shift happens before most standups end.
Checklist for a clean measurement
- Enter gross monthly salary, not net and not an hourly rate.
- Set attendees with the slider, presets run 2, 3, 5, 8, 12, and 20, and the slider spans 1 to 30.
- Switching to restroom mode? Set attendees to 1 first, the slider hides but still multiplies.
- Keep the tab in the foreground, background throttling slows the interval.
- Press Stop before reading the final figure, the total climbs while running.
- Use the share button to copy the result, it places the duration and total on the clipboard as one line.
Run the counter yourself at /en/meeting-cost. Put your actual payroll numbers in and let one real meeting run to completion. If your measured burn disagrees with the cards, check whether your salary basis, workday count, or headcount differs from the 633,600-second month, then send the correction so the constants match your reality.
