Payback is how long a business takes to return, through its own earnings, the money invested at the start. It answers the most direct question in any investment: how long until I get back what I put in?

It is a simple and very useful measure for comparing alternatives, though it says nothing about what happens after that point. That is why it is usually read alongside ROI.

Example: the proposed office model has a payback of ~1.1 years on an initial investment of USD 158,000. In a little over a year the investment would be recovered; from then on, everything is return.