> For the full site index see https://www.fenwickautomation.com/llms.txt > Every page has a Markdown version at the same URL with .md appended. # How to work out what paperwork costs your business a year A five-step method for putting a yearly pound figure on the quotes, forms and reports your team writes by hand, using your own numbers. 8 September 2026 · Updated 1 October 2026 · 4 minute read Count the hours your team spends on paperwork each week, multiply by what those people cost you an hour, and multiply that by the weeks they actually work in a year. That is the number. The rest of this post is how to get each of those three figures right, because the first guess is usually wrong in the same direction. ## Why does the first guess come out low? Ask a site manager how long the weekly report takes and he’ll give you a quick answer. Watch him and it takes a good deal longer. He opens last week’s, changes the dates, goes looking for the photos, phones the subcontractor for a figure, gets interrupted, comes back to it after lunch. His answer leaves out the interruptions. It also leaves out the second person who checks the report. Published surveys give you a sense of scale. Owners told the American Express SME Barometer for 2026 that admin and finance take up 11 hours of their week. Ricoh UK’s Opinion Matters survey, published in December 2025, asked employees in HR, finance and facilities roles rather than owners. It said 15. Different people asked, different answers, but neither number was small. Those figures are for one person. If several people in your office each spend part of their week on quotes, RAMS and reports, you have a number for each of them to add up. ## Step one: name the documents Write down every document that gets produced more than once a month. Be specific. Not “admin”, but quotes, method statements, risk assessments, permit-to-work packs, the monthly client report, the O&M file at handover, the timesheet chase on a Friday. Ask the people who do the paperwork what you’ve missed. Cross off anything that barely takes any time. It’s not worth measuring yet. ## Step two: count the hours honestly For each document left, ask two questions. How many a month? How long does each one take, start to finish, including the checking? Get the second figure by timing real ones, not by asking. If timing isn’t possible, take the person’s estimate and add to it, because first guesses come out low. Then add the time of everyone who touches the document. A quote takes the estimator’s time to write and the director’s time to sign off. Count both. Add all the documents up. You now have hours a week. ## Step three: work out the hourly cost Salary divided by hours is not what a person costs you. Employer National Insurance, pension contributions, holiday, the van, the phone and the software seat all sit on top. Add those to the salary, from your own payroll and accounts. Then divide by the hours that person actually works in a year. That is their hourly cost. Use the rate for whoever actually does the work. If the owner writes the quotes, use the owner’s rate, and be honest about what that is. ## Step four: multiply up Hours a week, times the hourly rate for each person, times the weeks they actually work in a year. Leave out the weeks lost to holiday. Here is the same sum on your own figures, one document at a time. Start with quotes. Write down how many go out in a month. Write down how long each one takes for each person who touches it: the person who writes it and the person who signs it off. Multiply each person’s time by their hourly cost from step three, and add them together. That is what one quote costs you. Multiply by the number a month, then by twelve. Do the same for method statements, client reports and the rest of your list, and add the totals. That is your yearly figure, before anything goes wrong. ## Step five: write down what the number leaves out Don’t skip this one. It’s where the real cost hides. The headline figure counts time. It doesn’t count the quote that went out with last month’s prices in it. It doesn’t count the job that started with the wrong method statement because someone copied the wrong one. It doesn’t count the client report that went out late and the phone call that followed. And it doesn’t count the quotes you never sent because the estimator was already behind. You won’t get a clean pound figure for these. Write them down anyway, with a rough guess at how often each one happens. When you come to decide whether fixing the paperwork is worth it, this list will matter more than the hours. ## What to do with the number If the figure is small and the list from step five is short, it may not be worth fixing. If it’s not worth doing, I’ll say so. If it’s large, it’s worth some thought about which document to fix first. Usually the answer is the one with the most repetition and the least judgement in it. Quotes built on your own pricing rules, or method statements where most of the content is the same every time. Those are the ones where the time can be [taken out without taking the person out](https://www.fenwickautomation.com/services/forms-and-documents.md). A person still checks each one before it goes. If you’d rather not do the sums by hand, the [paperwork cost calculator](https://www.fenwickautomation.com/calculator.md) asks eight questions and sends the working back by email within a working day. Or [book the 10-minute call](https://www.fenwickautomation.com/contact.md) and describe the document that eats the most time. You’ll leave knowing whether it’s worth fixing and roughly what it would take. **Blake Fenwick**, founder of Fenwick Automation Some of the systems we've built, running right now. [More about Blake Fenwick and how we work](https://www.fenwickautomation.com/about.md). [Blake Fenwick on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/blake-fenwick-a5ba95433/) ## Related - [Forms and documents: the route this piece is about](https://www.fenwickautomation.com/services/forms-and-documents.md) - [How to pick the one document to automate first](https://www.fenwickautomation.com/writing/which-document-to-automate-first.md) Last updated: 1 October 2026