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What is the chasing actually costing you?
Every proposal that went quiet and never got a second touch. Every hour spent asking a client for the same login twice. Every engagement that sat still for a fortnight after signing. None of it appears on a P&L, so most agencies never price it. Fill in three steps and see the number.
The result updates as you type, there is no form in front of it, and nothing you enter leaves your browser.
Proposals you never followed up on
The ones that go quiet. Without open tracking you cannot tell a client who read it twice from one who never opened it, so the whole batch gets the same silence.
What one won engagement is worth to you
Of the proposals you do send, how many turn into work
Sent, went quiet, never chased again
Formula: Proposals a year × % never followed up × average deal × your close rate = pipeline you walked away from
The hours spent chasing
Signatures, deposits, logins, the brand assets you asked for three times. Real hours at a real cost, spent on work no client has ever paid for.
Across everyone, not just you
Salary plus overhead, or your billable rate
Formula: Hours a week × 52 weeks × fully loaded hourly cost = annual cost of chasing
Engagements that stall after signing
The client signed, then nothing moved for two weeks while you waited on access and documents. Some of those never recover: they refund, ghost, or churn before the work is worth anything.
Signature to actually doing the work
Signed, but never got properly going
Formula: New clients a year × % that stall × average deal = revenue exposed to a slow start
What a tracked link actually changes
These are the only three assumptions in the model, and they are deliberately cautious. Every number on the right is one of your figures multiplied by one of these.
Formula: Each cost above × the matching recovery rate = what you get back. Nothing else is added.
Why these three numbers and not others
Most onboarding ROI calculators price staff time and stop there, because staff time is the easiest thing to multiply. It is also the smallest of the three for most agencies. The expensive line is almost always the first one: proposals that were sent, read, and then met with silence on both sides. An agency sending twelve proposals a month at a 25% close rate is walking away from a quarter of its potential year if it never follows up on a third of them.
The reason it goes unfollowed is not laziness. It is that a sent proposal is a black box. You cannot tell the client who opened it four times and forwarded it to their partner from the one who never opened it at all, so every one gets the same uncomfortable “just checking in” or, more often, nothing. Read tracking does not make anyone a better salesperson. It just tells you which three of the twelve are worth a phone call this week.
What the third number is really measuring
The gap between “signed” and “actually started” is where a surprising amount of revenue quietly dies. The client is at their most committed the day they sign, and every day after that the feeling fades while they wait for a welcome email, then an intake form, then a request for logins, each arriving separately over a fortnight. By the time you are ready to work, the enthusiasm you sold to is gone. A structured onboarding does not just save you time; it spends the client’s goodwill while they still have it.
If you want to see what that looks like in practice, the onboarding side of OnboardHive runs signing, payment, intake, access and uploads behind a single link per client, and proposal tracking covers the first number on this page.
Questions about the model
How does this ROI calculator work?
It prices three things you are already paying for and adds them up: proposals you sent and never followed up on, valued at your own close rate rather than at face value; the hours a week your team spends chasing signatures, documents and payment, at your loaded hourly cost; and the share of signed engagements that stall, refund or churn before the work is worth anything. It then applies a fixed recovery rate to each, which is printed on the page, to estimate what a tracked proposal link and a structured onboarding portal get back. Everything runs in your browser and nothing you type is sent anywhere.
Do I have to give my email to see the result?
No. The result updates as you type and there is no form in front of it. Most ROI calculators are lead-capture forms with arithmetic attached; this one is not, because a number you cannot see is no use to you when you are trying to decide something.
Are the recovery assumptions realistic?
They are set low on purpose. The model assumes you recover 30% of silent proposals, remove 60% of manual chasing, and save 40% of engagements that would otherwise stall. None of them is 100%, because none of them should be: most silent proposals are silent because the answer is no, some chasing is a phone call no tool replaces, and some clients go quiet for reasons that have nothing to do with your onboarding. Every rate is printed on the page, under "What a tracked link actually changes", so you can argue with the arithmetic rather than take it on trust.
What counts as a fully loaded hourly cost?
Salary plus payroll taxes, benefits, software and overhead, divided by working hours. For most small agencies it lands somewhere between 1.25x and 1.6x the raw salary rate. If you are a solo consultant, use your billable rate instead — every hour you spend chasing a document is an hour you cannot bill.
Why value unfollowed-up proposals at my close rate?
Because a proposal is not a win. Counting the full deal value of every silent proposal produces a huge, useless number that nobody believes. Multiplying by the rate at which you actually convert proposals gives you the expected value of the pipeline you walked away from, which is the figure worth acting on.
Is this specific to agencies?
It is built around how agencies, consultancies and freelancers work: send a proposal, wait, chase, sign, then chase again for the things you need to start. Accounting firms, bookkeepers and other professional-services teams run the same loop and the same inputs apply. If you sell self-serve software, the model will not fit you well.
Stop guessing which proposal is alive
OnboardHive tracks who opened your proposal, how long they spent on each section, and when they came back — then runs the whole onboarding through the same link. 14-day trial, $19/mo after.