What a one-hour meeting really costs

Nobody gets an invoice when a meeting ends. That may be why there are so many of them. The math isn't hard, though, and the result tends to surprise people.

We ran it for an ordinary meeting: five people, one hour, one topic.

People's time: $376

Start with each attendee's fully loaded cost, meaning salary plus employer taxes and benefits, per hour worked. In our internal study from September 2026, the average we used for the United States is $75.20 an hour. Five people for an hour comes to about $376.

That's the part everyone can guess. Two more lines don't show up on the calendar.

The minutes: $31

Someone takes notes. While they do, they're only half in the meeting. Afterwards they clean the notes up, get them reviewed and send them out. We count 24 minutes of work per hour of meeting, about $31.

The dollar amount is small. The real cost is timing: the recap often lands three days later, when no one remembers the meeting well enough to correct it.

What gets lost: $150

This one is the hardest to see. A decision written down wrong. An action item everyone thought someone else owned. A number that changed between Monday and Thursday with no one sure which is current. A quote sent with the old figure.

In the median scenario of our study, we put it at 40% of meeting time, about $150. It's an average: plenty of meetings lose nothing, and some let through a mistake that costs a customer.

Add it up, then multiply

The three lines come to about $557 per meeting. For comparison, the same meeting comes to roughly €424 in France and CA$400 in Quebec. A weekly team meeting, over about 45 working weeks, costs around $25,000 a year in the US. That's one recurring meeting. Most companies have dozens.

None of this means you should cancel your meetings. Many are worth it: ten minutes around a table can settle what thirty emails couldn't. The number makes a different point. What gets decided in a meeting has value, and that value disappears fast when nothing keeps track of it.

Three habits that help right away

• Keep the last two minutes to say out loud who does what, by when.
• Write every decision down with its date, so you know which one is the latest.
• Send the recap the same day, even if it's short.

They work. The hard part is keeping them up week after week.

What KISMO does

KISMO takes over the repetitive part. Invite it to your video call (Google Meet, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Webex), or call its number on speaker for an in-person meeting. Afterwards you get a memory of the meeting: summary, decisions, action items, transcript. You review it, then distill it into the Brain.

The Brain keeps every decision with its history. When the number changes between Monday and Thursday, it knows which one is current and shows you the meeting it came from.

We don't promise you a savings figure. We are measuring during the beta. To run the numbers with your own salaries and meetings, try the cost of forgetting simulator.