UK microbusinesses spent almost 10 weeks working on financial admin last year, according to a new report.
In Make Business Simple, Starling Bank surveyed 1,000 UK microbusinesses. The average firm clocked up 79 hours of labour a week, 15 of which go on finance admin tasks – a considerable 19% chunk of the total time. Smaller companies are disproportionately affected, with almost a third of sole traders (31%) spending a third of their time on financial admin and companies with between one and four employees spending 25% of their time in that area.
More than a quarter (27%) of microbusinesses state that they spend too much time on financial admin, rising to almost half (46%) for firms with between five and nine workers. One fifth of business owners (21%) said that if they could reduce time spent on finances, they would divert it towards sales.
Respondents also said that the most time-consuming aspect of running a business was accounting. It takes micro-firms 1.7 hours each week, equating to more than one week a year spent doing the books. Accounting was viewed as the most stressful part of running a business, being more likely to eat into downtime than any other task. A third (32%) said that this was the case.
http://ioee.uk/2020/01/16/microbusinesses-spent-10-weeks-dealing-financial-admin-2019/
https://www.microbizmag.co.uk/micro-business-statistics/
Article originally published on smallbusiness.co.uk