Ask most business owners what manual admin is costing them and the answer comes back as a feeling, not a figure. "Probably a day a week." "It's a lot, I know that much." Nobody's being evasive. The number genuinely hasn't been worked out, because the hours are scattered across the week in ten-minute fragments rather than sitting in one visible block you'd naturally add up.

The same is true of slow follow-up. It doesn't show up as a loss on a P&L. A lead who never got chased just quietly stops replying. There's no line item for revenue that never arrived.

Both numbers are calculable, though, and neither calculation is complicated once you've got the right inputs.

The time cost

Hours spent on the task per week × hourly cost of the person doing it × 4.3 = monthly cost

The hourly cost isn't just salary divided by hours. It's what that person's time is actually worth to the business, including the work they're not doing while they're stuck on admin instead. A business owner spending six hours a week on invoicing and scheduling at an effective hourly value of £40 is looking at roughly £1,032 a month — not in cash spent, but in capacity that never gets used on anything else.

The revenue leakage

Leads per month × the share not consistently followed up × your conversion rate × lifetime value = monthly leakage

This isolates the revenue tied specifically to the follow-up gap, not total lead value. It's the harder number to sit with, because it's not about work not getting done. It's about revenue that already showed up, in the form of a real enquiry from a real prospect, and then evaporated because nobody replied in time. The lead didn't fail to convert because of price or fit. It failed to convert because the follow-up never landed, or landed too late to matter.

Running your own numbers

The free SMB Automation ROI Calculator runs both of these for you. Enter your weekly admin hours, the hourly cost of the person doing them, your monthly lead volume, and your current follow-up rate, and it returns the monthly cost of manual admin and the monthly revenue leaking from missed follow-up — instantly, no email required.

These are the same categories a free Business Audit maps in more depth, with your specific processes and numbers instead of estimates. The calculator gives you the headline figure. The Audit tells you what to actually do about it.

See what manual admin and missed follow-up are costing your business this month. Free, instant, no email required.

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