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Admin Time Cost Calculator

What does admin time cost your business?

Enter the hours you and your team spend on admin each week. The calculator prices them, shows which tasks cost the most, and works out what you overpay by doing hand-off work yourself. The starting numbers are an example. Replace them with yours.

Your week

Your admin hours, by task

Hours per week. Tick “Hand off” for work that does not need your judgment.

3 h
1.5 h
1 h
1 h
1 h
1 h
0.5 h
0.5 h
0.5 h
Your admin hours per week10 h

Your team

Where your own hours go, per year

Email and messages
$10,800
Invoicing and chasing payments
$5,400
Scheduling and calendar
$3,600
Bookkeeping and expenses
$3,600
Re-entering data between systems
$3,600
Quotes, proposals and paperwork
$3,600
Ordering and supplier admin
$1,800
Payroll, rota and HR admin
$1,800
Reports and status updates
$1,800
Marked to hand offStays with you
How it is calculated

Three multiplications, no hidden factors

your cost  = your admin h/wk × weeks × your hourly value
team cost  = people × admin h/wk each × weeks × loaded cost
hand-off gap = hand-off h/wk × weeks × (your value − hand-off cost)

The calculator does not add a multiplier for interruptions or lost focus. Those costs are real, but there is no defensible single number for them, so they are left out. Your true cost is probably higher than the total shown.

Nothing you type leaves your browser.

Where the starting numbers come from

Sources and assumptions

  • 36% of the week on admin. Censuswide survey of 251 US entrepreneurs for Time etc, 22–28 September 2023. Average working week in the same survey: 45.5 hours.
  • $33 hand-off cost. Median pay for secretaries and administrative assistants, $48,310 a year (US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2025), is $23.23 an hour over 2,080 hours. Wages are 70.0% of what a private employer pays per hour (BLS, June 2026), so the loaded cost is about $33.
  • $75 owner hour and $40 team hour. These are HiddenDrain's example values, not statistics. For reference, average private-industry compensation in the US was $46.89 an hour in June 2026 (BLS, same release).
  • Example hours. Ten owner hours and five hours per team member are illustrations. All defaults are US figures. Changing the currency changes the symbol only.
FAQ

Questions about admin time

How much time do small business owners spend on admin?

In a Censuswide survey of 251 US entrepreneurs for Time etc (September 2023), admin tasks took 36% of an average 45.5-hour working week. That is about 16 hours a week.

What counts as admin time?

Work that keeps the business running but that no customer pays for directly: email, scheduling, invoicing and chasing payments, bookkeeping, re-entering data between systems, paperwork, ordering, payroll and internal reports.

What hourly value should I use for my own time?

If you bill by the hour, use your billing rate. If you do not, use what you would have to pay someone to do your highest-value work. The $75 starting figure is an example, not a benchmark.

Is the result a saving I can bank?

No. It is the value of the time. It turns into money only if the freed hours go to paid work or if you stop paying for those hours.

Related

The calculator prices the hours. The free HiddenDrain diagnostic looks for what creates them.

Find what creates this admin →