Client approval delay calculator
See how long client sign-off really takes, how far ahead you need to brief, and what chasing it costs each month.
Free. No sign-up. Runs in your browser. Checked 2026-09-09.
How this works, what it excludes, and the FAQsShowHide
Who this is for
Agencies and freelancers whose content sits waiting for client sign-off, particularly anyone planning a campaign calendar backwards from a launch date.
The formulas
working days = wait × rounds × reviewers
calendar days = working days × 7 ÷ 5, rounded up
chase hours = assets × rounds × minutes ÷ 60
chase cost = chase hours × hourly cost
Reviewers multiply rather than add because the usual agency experience is sequential review. That assumption is stated here rather than buried in the arithmetic, and the FAQ explains how to model parallel reviewers instead.
Why the headline is days, not rupees
It would be easy to put a large rupee figure at the top of this page. It would also be wrong. While an asset sits waiting for a client, your team is working on something else, the waiting is not labour you are paying for twice.
What waiting actually costs is schedule. It decides whether a Diwali campaign can ship on the day it needs to, and how far ahead of that day the brief has to be signed off. That is the number worth acting on, so it leads. The only money on this page is the chasing, because chasing is real time a real person spends.
What other people have measured
These are other people’s numbers, shown here as context. None of them is used in the calculator above, every figure it produces comes from what you typed.
78%
Agencies that say they rarely or only sometimes charge for out-of-scope work. Just 1% said they successfully bill for all of it.
- Sample
- 273 managers and executives at branding, creative, digital, marketing, PR, social and web agencies
- When
- Published May 2025
- Where
- Not stated by the source
The most transferable figure available here, because it describes behaviour rather than money, it does not depend on currency or cost base. It says the extra rounds most agencies absorb are absorbed almost everywhere, not that yours are typical.
57%
Agencies reporting USD 1,000-5,000 lost each month to unbilled work, with a further 30% reporting more than USD 5,000.
- Sample
- Same 273 respondents
- When
- Published May 2025
- Where
- Not stated by the source
Read this one carefully. The figures are US dollars and the source does not say which countries respondents were in, so the rupee equivalent is not meaningful for an Indian agency. Treat it as evidence that unbilled scope is widespread, not as a number to compare yourself against.
What usually shortens the cycle
- Fewer sequential reviewers. The multiplier in the formula is not a modelling artefact, one extra decision-maker in the chain is the single biggest lever on this page.
- A stated turnaround in the contract. An agreed response window turns chasing into a reference to something already signed rather than a favour to ask.
- Batching. A week of content reviewed in one sitting consumes one waiting cycle instead of five.
- Feedback in one place. Comments spread across WhatsApp, email and a call are the usual reason a round that should have been final becomes a second round.
Where Poststack fits
Poststack gives clients a portal where they review scheduled content and leave comments in one place, with each asset keeping its version and approval state.
We are not claiming that changes your numbers. This calculator contains no Poststack assumption and no product-attributed saving, every figure comes from what you entered. If you want to see what a different approval process would do, change the inputs yourself and compare the two scenarios.
Put this calculator on your own site
Free to embed on any site, including commercial ones. Paste the snippet into a blog post, a resources page or a client-facing guide and the calculator runs inside your page.
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- Default height
- 950px, adjustable in the snippet
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- None. No cookies, no analytics, nothing posted back to us
- Your readers’ data
- Stays in their browser. We never receive what they type
Frequently asked questions
- Why does the number of reviewers multiply the delay?
- Because in most agencies reviewers respond one after another rather than at the same time, the account manager sees it, then the brand lead, then someone in legal. Each hand-off adds a full waiting period. If your stakeholders genuinely review in parallel, set the reviewer count to 1 and use your slowest reviewer’s turnaround as the wait.
- What is the difference between the two day figures?
- The first is working days, which is how approval turnaround is usually discussed. The second converts to calendar days, which is what a campaign launch date actually runs on. A five-working-day cycle is seven calendar days, and that gap is where launch dates quietly slip.
- Should waiting time count as a cost?
- Not as labour, and this tool does not count it as such. While an asset sits with a client your team is working on something else. What waiting costs is schedule, not hours, which is why the headline figure here is days rather than rupees. The only money counted is the chasing, because that is real time someone spends.
- Does this account for public holidays?
- No. Working days here exclude weekends only. India has a lot of public holidays and they vary by state, so a campaign running through a festive period needs more slack than this calculation suggests.
- How do I use this for a campaign launch date?
- Work backwards. Take the calendar-days figure, add your own production time before the first send, and that is the date the brief has to be signed off. Most missed launch dates are not production problems, they are approval cycles nobody budgeted for.