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Tallystick puts a dollar value on what changed in the business after your campaign or program. You answer guided questions, and Tallystick gives you three figures: the credible business impact, the ROI, and the net. It also gives you a report you can print and hand to leadership, showing how Tallystick arrived at each number.

The numbers are conservative on purpose. Your campaign or program was probably one of several things that helped, so Tallystick only counts the share you can defend.

• One result that got better, like fewer people quitting or fewer support tickets.
• A rough count of that change.
• A rough idea of what the campaign or program cost.

Round numbers are fine. If you don't have a number, Tallystick gives you ways to get one, or to set a target and count later. The whole thing usually doesn't require a spreadsheet.

Sign up from the Internal Communication or L&D front door at tallystick.ai. You'll need your name, email, a password of at least 8 characters, and the invite code from your invite email. Capitalization in the code doesn't matter.

After you sign up, we send a confirmation email. Click the link in it to finish. If you don't see it, check your spam or junk folder for a message from INSIDE COMMS Tallystick.

To log in later, use "Returning user? Log in" on tallystick.ai.

After you log in, your home page has:

• Start a new measurement. Or pick up a draft you didn't finish.
• My measurements. Every report you've saved.
• Account. Your name, email address and password.
• Subscription and billing. Your plan.
• Recent measurements. Your three latest, with the dollar figure and ROI.

If a measurement is waiting on a count you said you'd collect later, a "Time to check in" card appears at the top. More on that under Counting results that aren't in yet.

Not sure what to measure? Click Show me how on your home page to open the warm-up.

Before step 1, Tallystick may show a short warm-up. Most people are used to reporting things like open rates, attendance or evaluation scores. Tallystick asks a different question: what changed in the business?

The warm-up gets you there in three questions:

1. What would you normally report for this campaign or program?
2. Why did your organization want this?
3. And what does the business get from that?

Your answer to question 3 is your business goal. Step 2 in the app will ask you what got better after your campaign or program. Use your business goal as your answer when you get there. Your answer to question 1 is useful too: step 2 reminds you where to add it to your report.

Don't want the warm-up every time? Check "Don't show this before every new measurement." You can bring it back with Show me how on your home page.

• Name. A short name you'll recognize later.
• What you did. A few sentences. This also helps the AI give a sharper estimate later.
• The stretch of time you're measuring. Pick the last 12 months, one campaign run, group or cohort, or other dates.

The time period matters more than it looks. From here on, every count and every cost should cover the same stretch, so the money spent and the results line up. Tallystick reminds you of this along the way.

Pick the result your campaign or program helped move:

• More sales
• Fewer people quitting
• Fewer customer escalations
• Fewer support tickets
• Fewer defects / quality issues
• Fewer safety incidents
• Less rework
• Less downtime
• Time saved

If none fits, pick Something else: I'll describe it and say what happened in your own words. The AI suggests how to measure it, and you check its suggestion before going on. Or choose "I'll define it myself."

Then enter roughly how many. Count the change compared with before, not the total. Count a change in the business, not opens, survey scores or evaluation scores.

If you don't have the number. Click "I don't have this number." That's common, and Tallystick gives you ways forward:

• Count it yourself. Tallystick tells you where that number usually lives and who can pull it.
• A shortcut. Tallystick suggests a quicker way to get a rough number. For example, compare one typical month before with one typical month after. Or start from public figures for your industry. For time saved, ask a few people how many hours a week it saves them.
• Find out what it would take to break even. Skip the number for now. Your result shows how many it would take for the campaign or program to pay for itself, and you decide whether that sounds realistic.

"Are you sure?" For some results, Tallystick checks your count against what's typical for a group your size. If yours is higher, it asks you to confirm before going on. You can keep your number.

Did you measure a change along the way? Optional. If you tracked things like survey results, quiz scores or skill checks, add them here as before-and-after figures. They don't change the dollar figure, but they go in your report as evidence your campaign or program worked.

This is the dollar value of one of whatever you counted: one resignation avoided, one support ticket, one hour saved. You have two choices:

• I have a number. Enter your own dollar value. No AI involved. Add a sentence on where it came from. It makes your report more credible.
• Estimate it for me. Answer a few quick questions about your organization's industry and how broad the impact was. The more you give, the sharper the number. The AI builds an estimate from published government data and what you told it, and lists its assumptions.

If the estimate doesn't fit your situation, you have two options. Click "Know something the AI didn't have?", add the detail, and re-estimate. Or type your own number over it. The report labels every figure as AI-assisted or entered by you.

An AI-enabled estimate can take up to a minute to generate.

Count everything you spent to make it happen: people's time, materials, vendors, tools. Count the cost that produced the results you measured. If you measured one session of a program you ran ten times, enter that one session's cost.

You have two choices:

• I have a number. Type the total, or add it up with the quick calculator.
• Estimate it for me. Answer what you know about who was involved, how many people it reached and any outside vendor. The AI fills in the rest and tells you what it assumed. You can change any line.

People's time is usually the biggest cost. Tallystick asks whether to count the time your audience or participants spent. Most people forget it. We recommend yes.

"Who has this number?" Click it next to any cost field to see who in your organization usually has the figure. For the hourly cost of people's time, ask HR or finance for the fully loaded hourly cost: pay plus benefits and payroll taxes. Still don't have it or can't get it? Tell Tallystick the rough mix of people involved (senior leaders, managers, professionals, frontline staff) and it works out a rate for you. If you leave both blank, it uses a national average, and the app tells you so.

Outside vendors. If you paid an agency, facilitator, speaker or production company, enter the full invoice amount. If the fee covered several sessions or runs, say how many, and Tallystick counts only the share for the one you measured.

Not counted. Tools you already pay for and use for lots of things, like your email platform or LMS, are left out. The estimate shows them under "Not counted" so it's clear they weren't missed by accident. If you bought something just for this campaign or program, mention it and it will be counted.

This step is what makes your number credible instead of inflated. Your campaign or program was probably one of several things that helped. Two settings trim the number to the share you can defend when someone pushes back.

• Share of the improvement you credit to this work. If you set it to 25%, you're claiming a quarter of the change.
• How did you decide? Pick one: you asked the people involved, compared with people it didn't reach or people who didn't participate, compared with before, or used your own judgment. This goes on your report next to the percentage, so a reader can see how you got there.
• How confident you are in the numbers. Lower confidence makes the final number smaller.

Both settings make the number smaller on purpose. A smaller number you can defend is worth more than a big one you can't.

Other benefits (no dollar value). Optional. Add things that got better that you can't price, like team morale or trust in leadership. They go in your report.

You'll see three figures side by side:

• Credible business impact. The dollar value of the change you're crediting to your campaign or program.
• ROI. How the return compares to what you spent.
• Net. The impact minus the cost.

Below them, "How we got this number" shows the steps behind your result, and "Why you can trust this number" explains the discounts you applied.

You may also see:

• A half-credit line. What your ROI would be if you gave your campaign or program half as much credit. It shows whether your result depends heavily on the credit share.
• What it would take to break even. If the ROI came out below zero, Tallystick shows how much change would be needed to cover the cost.
• A note on very large returns. A very large ROI will get questioned. Tallystick asks you to check that the cost counts everything, including people's time, and that the cost and the result cover the same slice of work.

The scope check. Before you can save, Tallystick asks whether your result and your cost cover the same slice of work. If the answer is no or you're not sure, use the links there to fix your count or your cost. Save stays grayed out until you answer.

Click Save & finish to save your report.

If you skipped the count to find out what it would take to break even, step 6 shows your break-even point instead: how many it would take for the campaign or program to pay for itself. See Counting results that aren't in yet.

As you work, your answers are saved in this browser. If you leave partway through, your home page offers "Pick up your draft," and the measurement screen offers "Pick up where I left off."

Three things to know:

• The draft lives in the browser you used. It won't appear on another computer or phone, or in another browser.
• A draft is kept for 30 days.
• You can have one draft at a time. Starting a new measurement deletes it.

Open My measurements and click any saved measurement. The report starts with the impact, ROI and net, then an executive summary. The sections after that show how each number was reached: where the count came from, what one unit is worth, the cost and what was left out, the credit share and how you decided it, and the assumptions behind any AI estimate. Any "measured along the way" results and other benefits appear too.

Every figure is labeled as AI-assisted or entered by you.

Click Download / Print PDF at the top of the report. Your browser's print window opens. To save a file, choose "Save as PDF" as the printer.

A campaign or program often improves more than one thing. Save your first measurement, then click Add another outcome from this campaign or program on its report. The name, description and time period carry over, so every outcome covers the same work and the same stretch of time.

You don't enter the cost again. The campaign or program report adds up all the outcomes and counts the cost once.

Before saving each extra outcome, Tallystick asks whether it counts different savings from the ones already measured. For example, "fewer resignations" and "lower hiring costs" are often the same money. Counting both would add the same dollars twice.

If you chose to find out what it would take to break even, your result is a target, not a result yet. When you save, you'll see one of two options:

• Start counting now. If your time period hasn't ended, keep a simple tally from today.
• Get the count. If the period has ended, the number already exists. Ask whoever tracks it.

Choose when to check back in: in 3 or 6 months if you're starting to count now, or in 1 or 3 months if you're getting a count that already exists. Click Add a reminder to my calendar to download a reminder that works with Outlook, Google and Apple calendars, or save without one. When the date comes, a "Time to check in" card appears on your home page. Click Enter my count, enter what you counted, and get your result.

If your count covers fewer months than your time period, enter what you have. Tallystick applies it to each month so the count and the cost still line up.

Reports don't change once saved. To try different numbers, click Edit a copy on a report. It opens a new measurement with your answers filled in. Change what you need and save it as a new report. If you have an unfinished draft, Edit a copy replaces it, and Tallystick asks first.

To remove a report, click Delete this measurement. This can't be undone. If other outcomes depend on a measurement's cost, delete those first.

Expect the question "Where did this number come from?" Your report answers it. Every figure shows its source: your own records, a published source, or an AI estimate you reviewed.

A few tips:

• Lead with the business change, not the dollar figure. "Fewer people left after the program" lands before the dollar figure.
• Point to the discounts. You claimed only part of the credit, and you reduced the number for uncertainty.
• Use the half-credit line if someone says you're taking too much credit.
• Say what changed "after" your work, not "because of" it.

• Credible business impact. The dollar value of the change you credit to your campaign or program, after both honesty discounts.
• ROI. Return on investment, shown as a percentage. It compares the net gain to what you spent.
• Net. Credible business impact minus the cost.
• Unit. One of whatever you counted: one resignation, one ticket, one hour.
• Value per unit. What one unit is worth in dollars.
• Credit share. The share of the improvement you credit to your campaign or program.
• Confidence. How sure you are of the numbers you entered.
• Fully loaded hourly cost. What an hour of someone's time costs the organization: pay plus benefits and payroll taxes.
• Break-even. The amount of change needed for the campaign or program to pay for itself.
• Time period. The stretch of time your counts and costs both cover.

Open Account from your home page.

• Your name. Change it and click Save changes.
• Email address. When you change it, we send a confirmation link to the new address and one to your current address. The change takes effect once you've clicked both. Can't find one? Check your spam folder.
• Password. Type the new password twice and click Change password.

Tallystick is free during the beta. To see your plan, open Subscription and billing from your home page.

Your measurements are stored in your account. When you ask for an AI estimate, Tallystick sends what you typed to Anthropic, our AI provider, to produce it. Your data is not used to train AI models. Using the AI is optional: you can enter your own numbers at every step.

Full details are in the Terms and Conditions, Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy, linked at the bottom of every page.

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My password reset link expired or didn't work. Reset links last one hour, and they only work in the browser where you requested them. Ask for a new link from the log in page, then open the email in that same browser.

My invite code was rejected. Type the code exactly as it appears in your invite email. Capitalization doesn't matter. Watch for stray spaces before or after.

I can't find my unfinished measurement. Drafts are saved in the browser you used, for 30 days. Open Tallystick in that browser on that device.

An AI estimate looks wrong for my situation. Click "Know something the AI didn't have?", add detail like a typical salary or your industry, and re-estimate. Or type your own number over the estimate. The report labels edited figures as yours.

Save is grayed out on the result page. Answer the scope check first. If you're adding another outcome, answer the savings check too.

The AI estimate shows an error. Try again. If it keeps failing, use "I'll enter my own number instead."

Click Report a problem at the top or bottom of any screen. Describe what you expected and what happened.