How much time and money do you spend on claims?

Key takeaways

• Environmental claims draw on marketing, sustainability, and legal time in four categories: Claim Review, Claim Documentation, Claim Training, and Claim Playbook, Policies, and Procedures.
• With the calculator's default assumptions (50 products with one claim each, US pay data), that work comes to about 1,313 staff hours and $195,109 a year.
• Every default is either sourced to public data, such as U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics pay data and European Commission estimates, or labeled as a Greencheq assumption, and every value can be changed.

Every environmental claim your company makes takes time from your marketing, sustainability, and legal teams. Most of that time never shows up in a budget line, so it is easy to underestimate. This calculator puts a number on it, using public pay data and your own inputs.

What the calculator measures

The calculator estimates staff time and its fully loaded cost across four categories:

• Claim Review: drafting, gathering evidence, reviewing, revising, and approving each claim.
• Claim Documentation: compiling the evidence file and approval record that proves each claim.
• Claim Training: building and delivering training for the people who write, review, and approve claims.
• Claim Playbook, Policies, and Procedures: writing and maintaining your company's rules for making claims and tracking regulatory change.

Estimate your annual cost

Use the simple view for a quick estimate, or the advanced view to tailor every assumption to how your team works. Every default is sourced, and all figures are annual totals in US dollars. Once you have your baseline, the scenario slider in your results shows what reducing that workload would be worth, and you can download your estimate as a one-page PDF.

Why this workload keeps growing

Environmental claims now carry direct penalties in all three markets, and each regulator expects evidence to exist before a claim is published.

United States

The FTC Green Guides (16 CFR Part 260) set out how the FTC applies its deception standard to environmental claims. Violating an FTC order or trade regulation rule carries a maximum civil penalty of $53,088 per violation, as adjusted in January 2025 [11].

United Kingdom

The CMA's Green Claims Code sets six principles for environmental claims. Since 6 April 2025, the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 lets the CMA fine businesses directly, up to 10% of global turnover [10].

European Union

Directive (EU) 2024/825 has applied since 27 September 2026, banning generic environmental claims that can't be backed by recognized excellent performance [8]. A Commission study found 53% of EU green claims vague, misleading, or unfounded and 40% unsubstantiated [6].

How the calculator works

Rate. Blended base pay is the weighted average of manager, director, and VP hourly pay using the shares you set (normalized to 100%). The fully loaded rate is blended pay × (1 + benefits and employer taxes) × (1 + overhead). Annual salaries are converted to hourly pay on 2,080 hours, the convention BLS uses, which keeps hourly rates conservative.

Claim Review. Claims per year are products with environmental claims × claims per product, defaulting to one claim per product. The first claim on a product takes the full hours per claim; each additional claim on the same product takes a set share of the effort of the one before (default 50%), so total effort per product is a geometric series: 1, 1.5, 1.75, 1.875, and 1.9375 first-claim equivalents for 1 to 5 claims. This reduction applies to drafting, review, and approval only. The hours-per-claim slider shows the average per claim for the claims-per-product setting you choose, so its default falls as claims per product rise (10 hours at one claim, 7.5 at two, about 5.8 at three); the calculation itself always starts from the first claim. Hours per claim are summed across the functions you include.

Claim Documentation. Documentation hours (building the evidence file and approval record) are added at a flat rate for every claim counted in Claim Review (default 2 hours), compiled once after approval rather than reduced for additional claims or repeated in revision rounds. It can be switched on or off separately from Claim Review. Claims sent back for revision add a further round at the effort you set.

Claim Training. Covers building and delivering training. Building and updating the course is a single annual figure (default 40 hours a year). Delivery counts learner hours (people trained × training length × trainings per year, so by default 120 people attending once gives 120 participants) and facilitator hours (sessions × (training length × facilitators + prep)), where sessions are the groups needed to seat everyone at each training.

Claim Playbook, Policies, and Procedures. Initial build hours are spread over their lifespan. Topic upkeep is topics × hours per topic per year. Regulatory monitoring is hours per month × 12, covering US, UK, and EU rules.

Simple and advanced views. Both views run the same calculation. The simple view shows the five inputs that move the estimate most: products with environmental claims, claims per product, hours to draft, review, and approve a claim, documentation hours per claim, and people trained per year. Its hours slider scales the three team hours together, keeping their proportions. Every other value keeps its sourced default unless you change it in the advanced view, and the simple view flags any advanced settings that differ from the defaults.

Results. All results are annual totals in US dollars, using US pay and employer cost data.

Who carries it. Claim hours are assigned to the function you entered them under. Shared work uses these splits (marketing / sustainability / legal): Claim Documentation 20 / 50 / 30; Claim Training course building 20 / 40 / 40, learner time 70 / 15 / 15, and facilitation 0 / 50 / 50; Claim Playbook, Policies, and Procedures build and topic upkeep 20 / 50 / 30 and regulatory monitoring 0 / 40 / 60. These splits are our working assumption, not published figures.

Where no benchmark exists. No public study measures in-house hours per environmental claim, documentation time, claim volumes, or playbook upkeep. Those defaults are deliberately modest starting points, anchored where possible to the sources below and labeled in the calculator. Replace them with your own figures for the most accurate result.

Sources

1. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2024, Marketing Managers (SOC 11-2021): median $161,030 ($77.42/hour); 75th percentile $211,080 ($101.48/hour); 90th percentile at or above the $239,200 ($115.00/hour) reporting cap. bls.gov
2. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, September 2025, private industry, management, professional, and related occupations: wages $53.25 and benefits $24.00 per hour worked, so benefits add about 45% to wages. bls.gov
3. U.S. Office of Management and Budget, Circular A-76 (revised 2003), Attachment C: standard overhead factor of 12% of personnel costs for government cost comparisons. Used as a conservative overhead default in all markets.
4. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, ASPE (2017), Valuing Time in U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Regulatory Impact Analyses: describes adding benefits and indirect costs (space, utilities, supplies, administrative oversight) to wage rates when valuing staff time on compliance tasks. aspe.hhs.gov
5. European Commission (2023), proposal for a Green Claims Directive and impact assessment: estimated verification cost of about €500 for a simple claim, up to €8,000 for a product lifecycle claim, and up to €54,000 for an organization-level claim. At EU managerial labor costs (Eurostat Structure of Earnings Survey 2018: managers' mean gross pay €28.6 per hour, about €50 fully loaded), €500 equals roughly 10 hours, which sets the 10-hour first-claim default. Costed at US pay, those hours come to more than €500, and every claim is costed at the simple-claim level. Lifecycle and organization-level claims would cost more, which keeps the estimate conservative. environment.ec.europa.eu
6. European Commission (2020) screening of environmental claims, cited in the Green Claims proposal: 53.3% of claims vague, misleading, or unfounded; 40% unsubstantiated. Cited for context; the 80% default revision rate is a Greencheq assumption reflecting that most claims need at least one round of changes before approval. environment.ec.europa.eu
7. Chapman Alliance (2010), How Long Does It Take to Create Learning? (249 organizations): average of 43 development hours per finished hour of instructor-led training; basic e-learning 79 (range 49 to 125); interactive e-learning 184 (range 127 to 267). Cited for scale only; the 40-hour annual build default is a Greencheq assumption.
8. Directive (EU) 2024/825 on empowering consumers for the green transition, amending the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive; applies from 27 September 2026. The separate Green Claims Directive proposal stalled after the Commission announced its intention to withdraw it on 20 June 2025. eur-lex.europa.eu
9. Directive (EU) 2019/2161 amending Article 13 of the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive: maximum fines for widespread infringements of at least 4% of annual turnover in the Member States concerned.
10. UK Competition and Markets Authority, Green Claims Code (2021), and the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, with direct consumer enforcement from 6 April 2025. gov.uk
11. U.S. Federal Trade Commission, inflation-adjusted civil penalty amounts, effective 17 January 2025: maximum $53,088 per violation under Sections 5(l), 5(m)(1)(A), and 5(m)(1)(B) of the FTC Act. ftc.gov
12. Substantiation must exist when a claim is made: FTC Green Guides, 16 CFR 260.2 (claims need a reasonable basis, often competent and reliable scientific evidence, before they are made); CMA Green Claims Code, principle 6 (claims must be substantiated with robust, credible, up-to-date evidence); Directive (EU) 2024/825 (claims about future environmental performance require a detailed, verifiable implementation plan with independent monitoring). These establish the documentation step; the hours default is a working assumption. gov.uk

This calculator provides estimates for planning purposes only. It is not legal, financial, or accounting advice, and results depend on the values you enter. Pay and cost data reflect the most recent official releases available in October 2026.