What manual admin really costs a 6-person business

Most owners know admin takes too long. Few have put a number on it. Working it out takes ten minutes, and the answer usually changes which task you automate first.

Step 1: list the repeat tasks

Write down the tasks that come back every week: chasing invoices, onboarding paperwork, copying data between apps, answering the same customer questions, building the Monday report. Ignore one-off projects for now. You're looking for the routine.

Step 2: estimate the hours honestly

For each task, ask the person who does it how long it takes in a normal week. Include the small interruptions: finding the file, checking the spreadsheet, waiting for a reply. Small tasks add up, and the interruptions are often where most of the time goes.

Step 3: put a price on an hour

Use what an hour of that person's time costs the business, including salary, employer costs and overheads. If the work pulls a fee-earner or the owner away from clients, the true cost is higher still, because that time could have been billed or spent winning work.

Step 4: do the sum

Multiply people by hours a week by 4.33 weeks by the hourly cost. That gives a monthly figure for repetitive admin. Our hours-lost estimate on the homepage does the same sum in your browser if you'd rather not use a spreadsheet.

Step 5: rank by cost, not by annoyance

The task everyone complains about isn't always the most expensive one. Sort the list by monthly cost and start at the top. That's usually the best first automation: the one that pays back fastest and proves the idea to the rest of the team.

You can't improve what you haven't measured. Ten minutes with this list will tell you where to start.