If you've landed on our homepage, you've seen the itemised list: a receptionist, an inbox manager, a quote follow-up specialist, a payment follow-up assistant, a content creator. Call it $442,000 a year, before anyone's found them a desk. It reads like a stunt number designed to make a point. It isn't. It's just what those five roles actually cost in Australia right now, with superannuation and on-costs added honestly instead of quietly left off.
Where the $442,000 actually comes from
- Receptionist - about $80k. Answers every call, which sounds simple until you count the ones that come in at 9pm or during lunch.
- Inbox Manager - about $85k. Runs the shared inbox: triage, replies, and knowing which five emails actually matter today.
- Quote Follow-up Specialist - about $92k. Chases every open quote on a schedule, instead of whenever someone remembers.
- Payment Follow-up Assistant - about $85k. Gets overdue invoices paid without anyone in accounts having the awkward conversation.
- Content Creator - about $100k. Keeps the socials going every week, not whenever there's a spare hour.
Add it up and you're at $442,000. That's before desks, laptops, software seats, or the three weeks it takes to find someone good in this market.
The bit the salary number leaves out
A base salary was always the floor, not the total. The real cost of a hire includes the parts nobody puts in the job ad:
- Weeks of recruiting, interviewing, and the one who seemed great and didn't work out.
- The first two or three months where they're learning your systems, not running them.
- Someone senior's time spent managing, correcting and covering while they get up to speed.
- What happens to the role the day they hand in their notice, and you start again from zero.
None of that shows up in the salary line, and all of it shows up in your week. It's also exactly where a system has the advantage: no onboarding ramp, no notice period, no sick days, and no starting again when it doesn't work out.
A system does the job, not everything the person in that role does. It won't manage the receptionist's desk plant or cover the Christmas party roster. It will answer the phone, chase the quote, and chase the invoice - properly, every time, for less than half the salary.
So which one first?
Almost nobody needs all five at once, and we'd tell you that on the call rather than sell you otherwise. The honest approach is the same one we'd use hiring a real person: start with whichever job is bleeding the most time or money right now, prove it out, then move to the next. We've written a five-question test for picking that first one if you want to run the numbers yourself before you talk to us.
Your own list will look different from the homepage's - different roles, different amounts, maybe a sixth one we haven't even listed. That's exactly what the discovery call is for: your actual numbers, not a stock example.