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Insight
What manual admin costs a 20-person company
190 hours a month, measured across 38 audits. Where the hours hide and what the first three workflows recover.
4 Aug 2026 · 6 min read
Insight
What manual admin costs a 20-person company
190 hours a month, measured across 38 audits. Where the hours hide and what the first three workflows recover.
4 Aug 2026 · 6 min read
Insight
What manual admin costs a 20-person company
190 hours a month, measured across 38 audits. Where the hours hide and what the first three workflows recover.
4 Aug 2026 · 6 min read
We audited 38 companies between 12 and 60 people over the last two years, before any automation was built. The pattern is consistent enough to put numbers on.
The headline
A 20-person company spends about 190 hours a month on tasks that copy data from one system to another, chase something, or build the same document again. That is more than one full-time person doing nothing but admin, spread across everyone so that nobody sees it.
Where it hides
- Invoicing and chasing: 34 hours
- Lead follow-up and CRM upkeep: 41 hours
- Client or customer onboarding: 28 hours
- Support replies that already have an answer: 47 hours
- Reports and month end: 40 hours
What it costs
At an average loaded cost of £38 an hour that is about £7,200 a month, before the cost of the things that went wrong: the lead nobody called, the invoice sent to the wrong address, the report that was a week late.
What automation recovers
Across the 38 companies the first three workflows removed between 55 % and 70 % of those hours within a quarter. The remaining work was the part that needed a person, and the person now had time for it.
The hours were never in the budget. They came out of the evenings of the people who cared most.
The audit
It takes a week, it is free, and it ends with the list of what to automate first and what each item is worth. Book a call and we will start there.
Something in your week that should run itself?
Tell us what eats the hours. A 20-minute call, a map of the first workflow, no deck.
Keep reading
Two more from the night shift.
01Guide6 Oct 20265 min readWhich workflow to automate first
Sort the list by hours lost, not by what looks clever. A ten-minute scoring method that picks the first project.Read the article
02Insight26 Sep 20266 min readZapier, Make or n8n: which one your business should run on
Same apps, different owners, different costs at volume. How we choose, and where AI agents fit.Read the articleWe audited 38 companies between 12 and 60 people over the last two years, before any automation was built. The pattern is consistent enough to put numbers on.
The headline
A 20-person company spends about 190 hours a month on tasks that copy data from one system to another, chase something, or build the same document again. That is more than one full-time person doing nothing but admin, spread across everyone so that nobody sees it.
Where it hides
- Invoicing and chasing: 34 hours
- Lead follow-up and CRM upkeep: 41 hours
- Client or customer onboarding: 28 hours
- Support replies that already have an answer: 47 hours
- Reports and month end: 40 hours
What it costs
At an average loaded cost of £38 an hour that is about £7,200 a month, before the cost of the things that went wrong: the lead nobody called, the invoice sent to the wrong address, the report that was a week late.
What automation recovers
Across the 38 companies the first three workflows removed between 55 % and 70 % of those hours within a quarter. The remaining work was the part that needed a person, and the person now had time for it.
The hours were never in the budget. They came out of the evenings of the people who cared most.
The audit
It takes a week, it is free, and it ends with the list of what to automate first and what each item is worth. Book a call and we will start there.
Something in your week that should run itself?
Tell us what eats the hours. A 20-minute call, a map of the first workflow, no deck.
Keep reading
Two more from the night shift.
01Guide6 Oct 20265 min readWhich workflow to automate first
Sort the list by hours lost, not by what looks clever. A ten-minute scoring method that picks the first project.Read the article02Insight26 Sep 20266 min readZapier, Make or n8n: which one your business should run on
Same apps, different owners, different costs at volume. How we choose, and where AI agents fit.Read the articleWe audited 38 companies between 12 and 60 people over the last two years, before any automation was built. The pattern is consistent enough to put numbers on.
The headline
A 20-person company spends about 190 hours a month on tasks that copy data from one system to another, chase something, or build the same document again. That is more than one full-time person doing nothing but admin, spread across everyone so that nobody sees it.
Where it hides
- Invoicing and chasing: 34 hours
- Lead follow-up and CRM upkeep: 41 hours
- Client or customer onboarding: 28 hours
- Support replies that already have an answer: 47 hours
- Reports and month end: 40 hours
What it costs
At an average loaded cost of £38 an hour that is about £7,200 a month, before the cost of the things that went wrong: the lead nobody called, the invoice sent to the wrong address, the report that was a week late.
What automation recovers
Across the 38 companies the first three workflows removed between 55 % and 70 % of those hours within a quarter. The remaining work was the part that needed a person, and the person now had time for it.
The hours were never in the budget. They came out of the evenings of the people who cared most.
The audit
It takes a week, it is free, and it ends with the list of what to automate first and what each item is worth. Book a call and we will start there.
Something in your week that should run itself?
Tell us what eats the hours. A 20-minute call, a map of the first workflow, no deck.
Keep reading
Two more from the night shift.
01Guide6 Oct 20265 min readWhich workflow to automate first
Sort the list by hours lost, not by what looks clever. A ten-minute scoring method that picks the first project.Read the article02Insight26 Sep 20266 min readZapier, Make or n8n: which one your business should run on
Same apps, different owners, different costs at volume. How we choose, and where AI agents fit.Read the article
Book a call
Tell us what eats your week. We'll automate it.
Pick what fits. On the call we map the first workflow, the tools it touches and the week it goes live.
Book a call
Tell us what eats your week. We'll automate it.
Pick what fits. On the call we map the first workflow, the tools it touches and the week it goes live.
Book a call
Tell us what eats your week. We'll automate it.
Pick what fits. On the call we map the first workflow, the tools it touches and the week it goes live.