How to run a one-week tally of your admin hours
Five working days, one sheet of paper, five marks. It is cruder than a time-tracking app and it works better, because you will actually finish it.
The short answer
Tape one sheet to the wall by the phone with five rows on it: questions answered, jobs retyped, appointments booked or moved, quotes chased, invoices chased. Every time one happens, mark it. At the end of the week multiply each row by how long that task honestly takes and you have your number, measured on your own business rather than borrowed from somebody else’s.
Why a tally beats a time tracker
Time-tracking apps fail here for a specific reason: none of this work is a task you start and stop. You are already holding a wrench when the phone rings. Nobody opens a timer to answer a pricing question. A tally survives that, because a mark takes half a second and can be made with a wet glove on.
It also removes the argument. Once the sheet says you answered the same question thirty-one times in five days, there is nothing to debate about whether it is a real problem.
The five rows
Fill the third column from your own week rather than a guess made in advance. Time three of each on the Monday and use the median, not the fastest one.
What not to mark
Do not mark the actual work. A tally that includes the job itself tells you nothing, because the job is what the business is for. Mark only the handling around it: the asking, the retyping, the confirming and the chasing. If you are unsure whether something counts, ask whether a stranger with your price list could have done it. If they could, it counts.
Do not mark anything twice either. One phone call that answers a question and books a job is two marks, not four, and only if both actually happened.
Reading the result honestly
Two mistakes are common. The first is using your hourly wage instead of your loaded cost, which is wage plus payroll tax, insurance and the overhead the hour carries. The second is treating a slow week as typical. Run the tally on an ordinary week, not the one after a holiday.
Once you have a number, what we automate is the map of which parts of it can be handed off, and call answering follows a single call from ring to booked job so you can see what a handed-off version looks like.
Frequently asked questions
What if my week is nothing like a normal week?
Run it anyway and write at the top what made it odd. An unusual week with a note beside it is still evidence. A normal week you never counted is not.
Can somebody else run the tally for me?
Yes, and it is often better. Whoever answers the phone most is closest to the marks. The one thing that does not work is reconstructing the week from memory on Friday afternoon.
How long before it is worth acting on?
Five working days is enough to see the shape. Anything shorter and one busy Tuesday distorts the whole sheet.
Rather not run it alone?
The free audit does this tally with you in fifteen minutes and puts your loaded rate against it. The written findings are yours whatever you decide next.
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