As a CFO and Head of Business Intelligence in a healthcare setting, I rely heavily on n8n to automate workflows that directly reduce manual effort and improve operational efficiency. One key metric I track is “Estimated Time Saved”, which helps quantify the ROI of each automation.
Currently, this field is manually configured as a static number of minutes. However, in real-world scenarios—especially in healthcare or customer-facing operations—the time saved varies depending on the volume of items processed. For example, sending reminders to 10 patients is not the same as sending them to 30.
To better reflect the true impact of automation, I’d like to propose a feature that allows this metric to be calculated dynamically using workflow variables or expressions.
The idea is:
Allow the estimated time saved field in n8n workflows to be dynamically calculated using expressions or variables, rather than being a static manual input in minutes.
My use case:
I run a workflow that sends reminder messages to patients scheduled for the next day. The number of patients varies daily, and I retrieve this data via a SQL Server query.
Writing 10 messages manually is not the same as writing 30—so the time saved by automation should reflect the actual workload.
$items().length * 2 // Assuming 2 minutes saved per patientThis would give a more accurate and meaningful metric for operational reporting and ROI tracking.
- It enables real-time impact measurement of automation.
- Improves dashboarding and reporting for business intelligence teams.
- Encourages users to quantify automation benefits with precision.
- Aligns with n8n’s philosophy of flexibility and low-code customization.
Any resources to support this?
- Use case: Healthcare appointment reminders
- Data source: MS SQL Server
- Potential implementation: Extend
estimated time savedto accept expressions or reference a variable from the workflow context.
Are you willing to work on this?
Happy to collaborate or test if needed!