Who this is for
Social media agencies, freelancers and in-house teams that produce client content on a retainer and want to see what revision rounds cost in team time.
It is most useful when you are about to renegotiate a retainer, when a particular client feels unprofitable and you want to see the shape of it in numbers, or when you are deciding how many revision rounds to include in a new scope of work.
The formula
Three equations, all of them visible in the result panel with your own numbers substituted in.
revision rounds = assets per month × average rounds per asset
monthly hours = revision rounds × minutes per round ÷ 60
monthly cost = monthly hours × blended hourly cost
extra-round cost = assets × max(0, average rounds − included rounds) × minutes per round ÷ 60 × blended hourly cost
Rupee amounts are rounded to the nearest whole rupee and hours to one decimal place. Rounds beyond your included limit are floored at zero, so a scope that already covers your average produces no extra-round cost rather than a negative one.
What each field means
- Assets produced per month
- Posts, reels, carousels. Count assets, not clients.
- Average revision rounds per asset
- One round is one pass of feedback plus the rework.
- Minutes of team time per round
- Reading feedback, chasing, reworking, resending.
- Blended hourly cost of that time
- What an hour costs you, not what you bill.
- Revision rounds included per asset
- Rounds your scope covers. Enter 0 for no limit.
An illustrative scenario
Illustrative only. These are made-up numbers chosen to show how the arithmetic works, not observed figures from any agency.
Suppose an agency produces 40 assets a month across its clients. Each asset averages 2 revision rounds, and a round takes about 30 minutes of team time once you count reading the feedback, chasing what is unclear and reworking the asset. The blended cost of that time is Rs 600 an hour, and the contract includes 1 revision round per asset.
That scenario gives 80 revision rounds, 40 hours of team time and an estimated Rs 24,000 in monthly revision cost. Because the contract includes one round and the average is two, the second round on every asset falls outside the included scope: 40 rounds, 20 hours, an estimated Rs 12,000 of labour beyond the included limit.
The point of the scenario is not the total. It is that the extra-round figure is the half of the number that a scope change or a clearer brief could act on.
What this estimate excludes
- Only the labour time you entered. It excludes tool subscriptions, media spend, and any overhead you have not put into the hourly cost.
- One blended hourly cost. If a designer, a copywriter and an account manager touch the same round at different costs, enter a weighted average.
- Rework time only. Time lost to waiting for feedback is not counted unless you included it in the minutes per round.
- A scenario built from your figures. It is not a measurement of your accounts and not a benchmark for any other agency.
How to use the result
- Run it once with your current averages to get a baseline you recognise.
- Run it again with the included-round limit you are considering. The difference between the two extra-round figures is the part of the cost a scope change would move.
- Change one input at a time. Changing two at once tells you the total moved but not which lever did it.
- Copy the estimate into your scope or retainer discussion. It carries the formula and your inputs with it, so the other side can see exactly how the number was reached and argue with the assumptions rather than the arithmetic.
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. Only 1% reported billing for all of it.
This is the figure most worth knowing before a scope conversation, and it transfers reasonably well because it describes behaviour rather than money. It says extra rounds are absorbed rather than billed almost everywhere - not that your own extra-round cost resembles anyone else’s.
Where Poststack fits
Poststack is a social media operations platform built for Indian agencies. Clients review and comment on scheduled content in a client portal, each asset keeps its version and approval state, and the operator controls what gets published.
We are not going to tell you that changes your number. This calculator has no measured Poststack outcome in it, no assumed reduction in rounds and no saving attributed to using the product. The figures are your inputs and the arithmetic above, and nothing else. If you want to know what a different revision workflow does to your cost, change the inputs yourself and compare the two scenarios.
Method
Version 1.0, updated 2026-09-09. The calculator is deterministic: the same inputs always produce the same outputs, and every output is a stated function of visible inputs. No default value is a benchmark, an industry figure or a Poststack measurement. Each starting value is a round number chosen to make the tool legible on first load, and every one of them is editable.
Calculation happens entirely in your browser. Nothing you enter is sent to Poststack or stored.
Frequently asked questions
What counts as one revision round?
One pass of client feedback and the rework that follows it. If a client sends three separate comments on the same asset in one reply, that is one round. If they come back again after you resend, that is a second round.
Should I enter my billed rate or my internal cost?
Enter your internal cost. The calculator estimates what the time costs you to deliver, not what it is worth to a client. Using a billed rate produces a revenue figure, not a cost figure.
Does this tell me what I should charge for extra rounds?
No. It estimates the labour cost of rounds beyond the limit you entered. What you charge is a pricing decision that depends on your contract, your market and your relationship with the client.
Is the result a benchmark I can compare against other agencies?
No. Every figure comes from the values you typed in. It is a scenario built from your own assumptions, not a measurement of your accounts and not an industry benchmark.