What is invisible work?
Start here if the term is new.
Read the articleWorth reading
What does invisible work
actually cost you?
Many founders know invisible work is a problem. Very few have put a number on it. The number, once you calculate it, tends to be uncomfortable.
At a glance
- What this is
- The calculation, with a table you can find your own row in
- What you need
- Your effective hourly rate and your weekly admin hours
- The illustrative range
- £28,800 to £168,000 a year across the illustrations below
- What it decides
- Whether fixing the problem is worth the money
The formula
Three numbers,
one multiplication.
You need your effective hourly rate, the average hours a week you spend on work that needs none of your expertise, and the number of working weeks in your year.
Choose a rate that matches the benefit you are testing. For avoided staffing cost, use the relevant avoidable cost. For extra client work, use a contribution value only where demand and delivery capacity exist. You can also value personal time separately, without calling it a cash saving.
Hours multiplied by a rate describes a value of capacity. It is not automatically lost revenue, an accounting expense or cash recovered. Some admin remains, and some released time will be used for management, rest or work that is not billable.
Illustrations
What the number looks like
at different rates
Find the row closest to your own rate, then the column closest to your own week. The four-to-ten-hour columns are example inputs, not a measured range for all founders. Use your own recorded week.
Illustrative annual cost of invisible work, assuming a forty-eight-week year
| Role | Rate | 4 hrs a week | 7 hrs a week | 10 hrs a week |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fractional CFO | £350/hr | £67,200 | £117,600 | £168,000 |
| Independent consultant | £250/hr | £48,000 | £84,000 | £120,000 |
| Founder-led team, CEO | £200/hr | £38,400 | £67,200 | £96,000 |
| Agency founder | £150/hr | £28,800 | £50,400 | £72,000 |
These are illustrations, not measured results. Each figure is simply rate multiplied by hours multiplied by forty-eight weeks. The point is the order of magnitude, not the precision. Your own rate and your own hours give the only number worth acting on.
What the simple calculation leaves out
What the simple
calculation leaves out.
Context switching. Admin does not only cost the time it takes. It costs the transition in and out of focused work. A twenty minute task that interrupts a deep session can cost considerably more than twenty minutes. This is hard to quantify and real.
Evenings and weekends. Many founders leave this out of their first estimate. If you are invoicing on a Sunday evening, that time has a cost, even though nobody billed it.
The rest of the team. If the founder is spending admin time, others often are too. A team of four each losing four hours a week is a different problem in scale, even when the cost per person looks manageable.
The decision
When fixing it
makes financial sense.
The number only justifies action if fixing the problem costs less than living with it. In practice the case is clear when three things hold at once: the annual cost is material, the tasks are genuinely repetitive across clients or time periods, and the work is not going to disappear on its own.
Discovery is scoped to the problem: a Focused Process Review is £350, and the broader Review starts from £650. Process Design and implementation are separately scoped. The apps article includes a starting point for a very simple app build; a quotation for your process still needs an agreed scope. Compare the full cost, including ongoing tools and checking, with benefits you can actually realise.
If the numbers do not support building anything, the Review says so. That is a legitimate outcome and much cheaper to reach at this stage than after a build.
A payback calculation built on an invented build price is worth nothing. Get the quotation, then compare.
In practice
What if only part of the time becomes paid work?
| Example input | Result |
|---|---|
| Five hours released per week, 48 weeks | 240 hours of capacity in the year. |
| Only two hours per week become extra paid work | 96 additional paid hours, if demand exists. |
| £100 contribution per additional paid hour | £9,600 before the cost of the change and its ongoing operation. |
| The remaining three hours per week | 144 hours for other work or personal time, without treating them as extra revenue. |
These are illustrative inputs, not client results or market rates. Calculate net benefit and payback before deciding what to spend.
Before we talk
What people ask
about the number.
The calculation raises the same three questions almost every time.
My rate is not really a billing rate. What do I use?
Use your day rate divided by eight, or your annual drawings divided by 1,600 hours. It is a proxy, not an accounting figure. It only needs to be good enough to tell a £30,000 problem from a £3,000 one.
Is it not cheaper just to hire someone?
Sometimes. A person absorbs the work rather than removing it, so the cost recurs every year and returns when they leave. The hire or automate comparison sets out when each one wins.
What if my number is small?
Then you have your answer, and it cost you nothing to find out. A small number is a good reason not to spend anything, and I would rather you reached that conclusion on the free call than after a Review.
Keep reading
Related
Your business
What is your number?
Tell me how your week works and I will calculate the annual cost of your invisible work and tell you whether fixing it makes financial sense.
15 minutes · No charge
Prefer to write? anne@10pm.works