Before you begin gathering the data, pick a start date for the project. It can be any date, but you need to define a point that starts year 1. You must now consider all costs and savings before the start date as occurring in the initial year; everything after that date should be considered spent or saved in year 1, year 2, or year 3.

Next, pick an average fully loaded cost per employee. You'll use this to number calculate the cost of the time spent on the project and also the time saved by employees. You can use more than one category of employee; just be sure to choose an average fully loaded cost for each category.