Store count, label quantity and sector — every calculator on the site will use it.
Decision support tools
Return on investment and budget estimate
Enter your own numbers and the savings, payback period and cash flow are calculated instantly. The model is conservative — assumptions are not inflated to make the result look good.
The default figures (staff cost, label unit price, exchange rate effect) were last updated on 2026-08-13 .
This site does not publish product prices — the label unit price, access point, installation and licence costs are in the quotation you receive. Pre-filling these fields would amount to saying "a label costs about this much", and your calculation would rest on our guess. Fill the four fields below and the result is computed from your own figures.
Annual savings by item
Cost and investment
Cumulative cash flow
Operational impact
Budget breakdown
Range by segment
Approximate first-year cost of the three manufacturer segments for the same scope.
Calculation method
Annual manual labelling work = label count × weekly change rate × 52 × time per label. Multiplied by the staff hourly cost this gives the annual labour cost; after ESL, 80% of it is assumed to disappear.
Consumables saving = labels changed per year × paper/toner unit cost (97% reduction).
Price error loss = daily transactions × 365 × error rate × loss per error. After ESL 85% of this disappears; the remaining 15% is left as human data error.
Margin / availability gain = annual revenue × the percentage you enter. This is an unmeasured gain; being conservative — or entering 0 — is safest.
Payback = initial investment ÷ annual net saving (after annual software cost).
NPV = the sum of annual net cash flows discounted to today at the real discount rate, minus the initial investment.
Reference values and the Turkish reality
- Industry sources report 30–50 staff hours a week of labelling work in a store with 20,000 SKUs.
- ESL is reported to cut the routine price labelling workload by up to 80%.
- In 2026 label hardware costs range from ~USD 4 for a 1.6" entry model to ~USD 25–35 for a 7.5" full-colour one.
- Real payback periods in US grocery are reported in the 24–36 month range.
Commonly missed items
Missed costs
- Battery replacement (a bulk cost after 5–10 years)
- Lost/broken label replacement rate (1–3% a year)
- Network infrastructure and electrical work
- ERP/POS integration development
- Staff training and process change
- Exchange-rate risk — hardware is imported
Missed gains
- Margin optimisation through dynamic pricing
- Fewer lost sales through out-of-stock detection
- Faster online order picking with LEDs
- Lower paper consumption and sustainability reporting
- Retail media advertising revenue potential
Risks
- Wrong protocol choice → coverage problems
- Inadequate pilot → surprise costs at scale
- Dependence on a single supplier
- Uncertainty over spare parts and long-term support
- No exchange-rate or licence increase cap in the contract