Meeting Cost Calculator

A real-time calculator that shows the running dollar cost of a meeting — a useful tool for helping teams think about the true cost of their time.

Starter Prompt

Create an interactive calculator that shows how much a recurring meeting costs in salary, based on the number of attendees, their average salary, meeting length, and how often it repeats.

Expanded Prompt

Create a professional Claude Artifact called the Meeting Cost Calculator.

Goal

Build an interactive calculator that reveals the real financial cost of meetings — especially recurring ones. Help leaders understand how much salary time their meetings consume.

Audience

Executives, managers, team leads, project managers, and operations leaders.

Required Inputs

• Meeting name
• Number of attendees
• Average annual salary per attendee
• Meeting length in minutes
• Meeting frequency: one-time, daily, weekly, biweekly, or monthly
• Number of weeks or months to calculate
• Optional: estimated productivity loss after the meeting, in minutes

Calculation Logic

Hourly Rate        = Annual Salary ÷ 2080
Meeting Cost       = Attendees × Hourly Rate × (Meeting Minutes ÷ 60)
Recurring Cost     = Meeting Cost × Number of Meetings

Productivity Loss  = Attendees × Hourly Rate × (Loss Minutes ÷ 60) × Number of Meetings
Total Cost         = Recurring Cost + Productivity Loss Cost

Display Results

Show:

• Cost per meeting
• Total number of meetings in the selected period
• Total recurring cost
• Productivity loss cost (if entered)
• Grand total estimated cost
• Total employee hours consumed
• A plain-English summary of the results

Executive Insight

Include a short, direct insight such as:

This 60-minute weekly meeting with 8 attendees costs approximately $X per meeting and $Y over 12 months. If this meeting does not create at least $Y in value, it may be worth shortening, reducing attendance, or replacing with an async update.

Recommendations

Based on the total cost, suggest practical improvements such as:

• Shorten the meeting
• Reduce the attendee list
• Switch to biweekly
• Replace with an async update
• Require a written agenda
• Define a clear decision or outcome before the next meeting

Default Scenario

Preload with:

• Meeting name: Weekly Strategy Sync
• Attendees: 8
• Average salary: $150,000
• Length: 60 minutes
• Frequency: weekly
• Period: 12 months
• Productivity loss: 15 minutes

Design Requirements

• Modern, executive-friendly dashboard layout
• Large, prominent cost numbers
• Dashboard cards for each result section
• Color coding to draw attention to high costs
• Clean SaaS-style interface
• Mobile-friendly

Tips for Refining

• “Add a live stopwatch that accumulates cost in real time while a meeting is happening”
• “Let me enter different salaries per attendee”
• “Add a comparison showing what that money could fund instead”
• “Export the results as a formatted summary I can paste into a slide”