Every business owner knows admin takes too long. Almost none can say what it costs. The number is worth knowing, because it decides what is worth fixing and what is not.
Admin does not arrive as one job. It arrives as a hundred small ones: the quote typed up at nine at night, the same question answered for the third time that day, the invoice chased on Friday, the spreadsheet updated on Sunday. Each one is too small to count. Together they are usually the single largest cost in the business that does not appear on any report.
1. List the recurring jobs. Not the big projects: the things that happen every day or every week. Answering enquiries. Writing quotes. Chasing payment. Updating records. Rotas. Reminders. Filing. Ask each person in the business for their list, because the owner never sees all of it.
2. Put a time on each one. How many minutes, each time it happens. Be honest rather than generous; the first guess is usually low. Then how many times a week.
3. Put a name on each one. Who does it. This matters because an hour of the owner’s time and an hour of a part-timer’s time are not the same cost, and because the owner’s hours are the ones nobody has counted.
4. Multiply. Minutes, times a week, times the hourly cost of the person doing it. Add them up. That is the weekly figure. Multiply by forty-six for the year.
Three things, in most businesses we have counted. The total is larger than anyone guessed. The most expensive job is rarely the most annoying one; the most annoying one is usually small, and the expensive one is something nobody noticed because it is spread across everyone. And a large share of the total sits with one or two people, often the owner, in hours that were meant for something else.
Do not start with the biggest number. Start with the job that is repeated most, follows the clearest rule and is easiest to check, because that is the one that can be fixed quickly and proven. Prove the first one, measure it the same way you counted it, and only then look at the next.
Keep the list. Whatever you decide to do, you now have the one document most businesses never write: what the work actually costs, in pounds, by job and by person. Measure against it in six months.
The calculator on our home page does steps two to four for you and keeps nothing you type into it. If you would rather have someone else do the counting, alongside your team and with the figure checked, that is what our assessment is.
Twenty minutes with Tom Williams, at no charge. Tell us how your business runs and where the days go, and we will tell you where the opportunities are likely to be, and whether an assessment is worth your money. If it is not, that is what you will hear.
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