The average employee spends around 2.5 hours per day looking for documents.

This translates into $19,732 a year.

Have you ever stopped to calculate how much you’re spending?

We have the solution right here.

What is Document Search?

Document search is the process of locating specific files within file cabinets. These can be either digital or physical.

Documents can be searched by file name, keywords, metadata, content, or filters such as date, department, or document type.

Although it sounds like a pretty routine task, document search is a daily activity that is link to almost every task in a business and can be the mark between an efficient team and an absolute mess.

Document search is involved in answering client questions, approving invoices, preparing reports, or responding to audits, for example.

When search tools are limited or poorly structured, even simple retrieval tasks become time-consuming and disruptive.

Leading your team members to spend over 9 hours per week searching for documents, and in many cases, having to replicate them.

What Are the Hidden Costs of Document Search

The true cost of document search goes beyond the minutes (or hours) spent looking for a file.

Employees often lose productive work hours each week searching across folders, email threads, shared drives, and legacy systems.

When documents cannot be found quickly, work is delayed, meetings stall, and deadlines slip. In many cases, employees recreate documents they cannot locate, leading to duplicate files, version conflicts, and inconsistent data.

These inefficiencies increase labor costs, introduce errors, weaken compliance, and erode trust with clients and internal stakeholders.

Over time, poor document search quietly becomes a significant operational expense.

How to Calculate Document Search Time

To calculate the cost of document search, start by estimating how many hours employees spend each week searching for documents.

Multiply this by the number of employees involved and their average hourly wage to determine the weekly cost of document search.

Multiply this figure by 12 months to understand the full impact over a year.

This simple calculation reveals how quickly small inefficiencies scale into substantial financial losses as document volumes and teams grow.

Free Dokmee Document Search Calculator

To calculate document search time quickly and efficiently, try out this free calculator below and discover the monetary impact these inefficiencies have.

Reduce Costs with Dokmee ECM

Dokmee ECM reduces document search costs by centralizing content, applying structured metadata, and enabling fast, accurate search across both active and archived documents.

Full-text search and OCR ensure information is discoverable regardless of format, while role-based access and audit trails maintain security and compliance. By reducing time spent searching and eliminating duplicate work, Dokmee takes out hidden costs and turns them into a competitive advantage.