Free tool
After-hours lead calculator
Most small businesses answer messages during business hours and let the rest wait until morning. This calculator puts a number on what "until morning" costs.
Your numbers
Every inbound message, call or form across all channels.
Nights, weekends and holidays — plus the daytime stretches when everyone is busy with a customer.
Of the enquiries you do answer, how many become a sale or a booking.
What one closed enquiry is worth to you, on average.
The numbers update as you type. Nothing is sent to us and nothing is stored.
The result
Enquiries that arrive with nobody there
140
Estimated revenue at risk per month
$4,200
Estimated revenue at risk per year
$50,400
"At risk" is not the same as "lost forever" — some of these customers will wait for you. It is the upper bound of what answering instantly could protect.
A customer who messages you at 9pm is not browsing. They have decided to buy something, book something, or ask the one question standing between them and a purchase. If nobody replies, a good share of them will have found somebody else before you open.
The maths is simple: how many enquiries you get, how many arrive outside working hours, how many of those would have turned into sales if answered, and what a sale is worth. The calculator below multiplies those four numbers. Change any of them to see your own figure.
A worked example
A business that gets 400 enquiries a month, with 35% of them arriving outside business hours, closes 20% of the ones it answers, and averages $150 per sale. That is 140 enquiries a month landing when nobody is there — worth about $4,200 a month, or $50,400 a year, if every one of them would have converted at the usual rate.
How this is calculated
There is no black box here. Four inputs, three multiplications:
- Missed enquiries = monthly enquiries × after-hours share.
- Revenue at risk per month = missed enquiries × close rate × average sale value.
- Revenue at risk per year = monthly figure × 12.
Assumptions, stated plainly
- It assumes an after-hours enquiry would have closed at the same rate as a daytime one. In practice, some are more motivated (they are shopping now) and some are less. We do not adjust in either direction, because we have no defensible number to adjust by.
- It assumes nobody comes back. Some customers do wait until morning. Treat the output as the ceiling of the opportunity, not as money already gone.
- It counts revenue, not margin. If you want profit at risk, multiply the result by your gross margin.
- The defaults are illustrative starting points, not benchmarks for your industry. Your own four numbers are the only ones worth acting on.
Got questions? We answer them here
What counts as "after hours"?
Any time nobody on your team is realistically going to see and answer a message: nights, weekends, holidays, and the stretches during the day when everyone is with a customer. If you are honest about that last one, the share is usually higher than people first guess.
Where does the default after-hours share come from?
It is an illustrative starting point, not a benchmark — we do not have a defensible industry figure and will not invent one. The share varies enormously: restaurants and retail skew towards evenings and weekends, B2B services towards office hours. Count a week of your own messages and replace it; the answer gets much sharper.
Does replying instantly actually recover these sales?
It recovers some of them, not all. A fast, useful reply keeps the conversation alive so your team can close it in the morning; that is the realistic win. Anyone promising you the whole number back is selling something.
How does Liveline change this figure?
Liveline answers WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger messages automatically, in your own words and grounded in your own information, at any hour — and hands the conversation to a human when it needs one. The enquiry gets a real answer at 9pm and lands on your board for follow-up the next morning.
Be ready for the next after-hours inquiry
Connect your channels, add your business information, and give your team a clearer starting point for follow-up.