A meeting cost calculator is mostly a units problem

When I started building MeetCost, I expected the hard part to be the interface. It wasn't. The hard part is that 'the cost of a meeting' isn't a well-defined quantity, and the first job is deciding what the number is even supposed to represent.

The model I settled on is deliberately plain. Take each attendee's salary, convert it to a cost per unit of working time, multiply by the meeting duration, and sum across attendees. That's it. MeetCost does exactly that: instant cost from salary and duration, with a per-attendee and hourly breakdown.

The arithmetic is the easy part

An annual salary is a yearly number; a meeting is in minutes. To connect them you need a divisor - the number of paid working hours in a year - and then a conversion from hours to the meeting length. Once you fix those two constants, the rest is multiplication and a sum. Per-attendee cost is rate * duration; total cost is the sum of those; an hourly breakdown is the same rate expressed per hour.

I keep that logic visible because the number is only as meaningful as its inputs. If the salary figures you type are rough, the output is rough. If you leave out the person who joined for ten minutes, the total is low. None of that is a bug; it's what a model based on user-supplied inputs means. The 'Per-attendee and hourly breakdown' feature exists so you can see which term dominates rather than staring at a single alarming total.

There's a design choice worth naming: I don't try to estimate opportunity cost, lost focus, or the value of what the meeting produced. Those are real, but they aren't computable from salary and duration, and pretending otherwise would be inventing a metric. The tool computes a labor-cost estimate, full stop.

Projections are extrapolations, not measurements

The 'Weekly and monthly cost projections' feature takes a meeting's cost and scales it by how often it recurs. That's useful for a recurring standup, but it's an extrapolation of an assumption you supplied: that the meeting happens that often with those people. It is not an observation of what you actually spent. If attendance varies, the projection drifts.

I'd frame that number as 'what this would add up to if nothing changed', not 'what this is costing you'. The distinction is small in wording and large in how people act on it. A projection is a scenario, which is why I treat the whole tool as decision-support rather than an accounting report.

The 'AI tips to reduce meeting waste' feature is the least numeric part, and I'm the most cautious about it. The tips are suggestions generated alongside the cost, aimed at cutting wasted meeting time. They're not an audit of your calendar and they don't know your org. A suggestion to shorten a recurring meeting might be exactly wrong for a team that needs that time. I'd read them as prompts, not instructions.

The honest limits

MeetCost estimates labor cost from salary and duration. It doesn't measure productivity, doesn't connect to your calendar, and doesn't verify the salary or attendance numbers you enter. It's not a financial system, a payroll figure, or a live audit of how your organization spends time. It's a calculator that makes a vague cost concrete enough to argue about.

That last point is the real use. Before the number exists, 'this meeting is too expensive' is a feeling. After, it's a figure with a breakdown you can dispute line by line - argue with the rate, the duration, the headcount. A disputable number is more useful than a dramatic one. Just don't present it to finance as a measured cost; it's an estimate built from inputs you typed.

FAQ

What does the cost figure actually represent?

An estimate of labor cost: attendee salaries converted to a time rate, multiplied by duration, summed. It doesn't include opportunity cost or meeting value.

Are the weekly and monthly projections measured?

No. They're extrapolations from a recurrence assumption you provide, not observations of actual spend.

Does it connect to my calendar or payroll?

No. You supply salary and duration. The tool doesn't verify those inputs or read your calendar.

Should I treat the AI tips as an audit?

No. They're generated suggestions, not a review of your calendar. I'd read them as prompts and decide for yourself.