Most Australian small business owners think the cost of a receptionist is the salary line on the payroll printout. If you pay $32/hour for 38 hours per week, that's $63,232/year, right? That's the number that goes in the budget. That's the number when comparing alternatives.

But that number is wrong. Or rather, it's only half right. The Fair Work Act, mandatory superannuation guarantees (11.5% in 2025, rising to 12% in 2026), state-specific WorkCover premiums, public holiday entitlements, leave loading, and the often-ignored cost of recruitment, training, equipment, and management overhead all stack on top. Add it all up and a $32/hr receptionist actually costs your business closer to $67,400 per year — about 7% more than the gross.

And that's for ONE person covering 38 hours per week. Your business probably runs at least 50 hours per week (Mon-Sat). Your customers expect responsiveness 24/7 (people DO call after hours). When your receptionist is on lunch, on annual leave, on sick leave, or on a public holiday, your phone goes unanswered — or worse, gets answered by a tired colleague pulled away from billable work. The "covered hours" reality is closer to 38 out of 168 (23%), which means 77% of the week is uncovered.

The calculator below builds your specific TCO. Then we'll show you the AI alternative that costs $7,188/year, runs 24/7, and never takes a sick day.

The receptionist TCO problem isn't just about the cost — it's about what you're NOT getting. When you pay $67,400/year for a single receptionist, you get coverage for 38 hours of the 168 hours your phone could ring. That's 23%. The other 77% — lunch breaks, evenings, overnight, weekends, public holidays, sick days, annual leave — goes uncovered. Customers calling in those hours hit voicemail or hangup tones.

If you wanted true 24/7 coverage with humans, you'd need 4.4 full-time equivalents working in shifts — that's $296,000+/year, not including penalty rates for nights and weekends, which would push it past $400K. No SMB can afford that. Almost everyone settles for partial coverage and accepts the missed-call losses (which average $87K/year — we have a calculator for that too).

AI flips the equation. For $7,188/year you get 100% coverage of all 168 hours, unlimited concurrent calls, instant pickup, and structured data flowing into your CRM. The TCO comparison is 9.4x in AI's favour. The coverage comparison is 4.4x in AI's favour. Combine them and AI delivers roughly 41x more value per dollar than a human receptionist for phone-and-admin work.

This isn't about replacing humans wholesale — humans still bring the irreplaceable in-person warmth and culture-bearing. It's about deploying humans on the work that actually needs human judgement, while AI handles the volume.