How Much Expert Time Does Your Irish Practice Lose Every Pay & File Season?
Irish accountancy practices lose hours every year to chasing client documents, retyping data, building reports by hand and waiting for approvals. Enter your team size, the hours each person loses a week and the value of an hour in the calculator below to see the yearly total.
Every practice knows October is hard. Fewer can say how many hours of it were not really accountancy. Those hours rarely appear on a timesheet, because they are made of small tasks: an email, a retype, a copy, a check. This page helps you put a number on them, using your own figures.
01. What a normal busy week looks like
On Monday, a client's records are still missing. Someone sends a reminder, then another, and notes it on the file. On Wednesday, the same figures are typed into the bookkeeping system and again into a workpaper. On Thursday, a partner asks where a return stands, and someone checks three places to answer. On Friday, a decision is waiting in an email thread, and the work behind it waits too.
None of these tasks needs an accountant's judgement. All of them take an accountant's time. In the weeks before the Pay & File deadline, they pile up, because every client is chasing and being chased at once.
Four time-sinks account for most of it:
- Chasing clients for documents. Reminders, follow-ups and checking whether anything has arrived.
- Typing the same data twice. One figure entered in the bookkeeping tool, the workpaper and the return.
- Building reports by hand. Numbers copied from one system into a report template.
- Waiting for approvals. A sign-off sits in an inbox, and someone spends time finding out where.
02. What automation and AI can take over
Most of the four time-sinks are handoffs: information moving from one place or person to another. Handoffs are exactly what can be connected, without replacing the software the practice already uses.
- Document requests and reminders can go out from one list, and record what has arrived, so nobody checks inboxes to find out.
- Data can be captured once and carried to the places that need it. AI can help read a document and pull out the figures. A person still checks them.
- Reports can be assembled from the source data instead of copied into a template.
- Approvals can be recorded in one place, with a name and a time, so waiting becomes visible.
Some things stay with people: professional judgement, review of the figures, and the conversation with the client. The aim is to remove the typing and the checking, not the accountant.
A connected workflow keeps the tools you have, such as your bookkeeping and document-capture software, and removes the manual steps between them. For the arithmetic behind that idea, see where billable hours actually go.
03. Calculate your practice's number
Practice Admin Time Console
Capacity & Handoff DiagnosticsBased on 46 working weeks a year. Cautiously models 50% recovery. Estimate based on your inputs; not tax or financial advice.
04. How to use it
- Enter your team size. Count everyone who touches these four tasks, even if only part of their week.
- Enter hours lost per person per week. If you are not sure, ask each person to note the minutes for one week and take the average.
- Enter what an hour is worth. Use a blended chargeable rate, or your best estimate of the value of an hour of your team's time.
The result updates as you type. Choosing the biggest time-sink is optional. It does not change the numbers. It is only passed along if you decide to book a conversation, so that the conversation starts where your time goes.
An example. A practice of eight people loses six hours each per week, and an hour is worth €100. A practice of eight people losing six hours each per week loses 2,208 hours a year. At €100 an hour, those 2,208 hours are worth €220,800 of team time, not €220,800 of cash. If about half could be recovered, that practice gets back 1,104 hours, or 138 working days.
These are example numbers, not an Irish average. Hours lost to admin are only recoverable as capacity. They become income only when there is work to fill them.
05. What a partner can see when the systems connect
When requests, data, reports and approvals sit in one connected workflow, a partner can see the position without asking anyone to build a report. Which clients still owe documents. Which returns are waiting for review or approval, and for how long. Which are due soon. Each person sees what their role needs, and each step leaves a record of who did what and when.
That visibility is often worth as much as the hours. A partner who can see the whole picture makes decisions earlier, and the team spends less time answering the question "where are we on this?". For the season itself, week by week, see Pay & File season: where the hours go and what to fix first.
06. Frequently asked questions
How is the yearly total worked out?
Hours a year = people × hours each per week × 46 working weeks. Cost a year = those hours × the value of one hour. The recovered figure is half of both, shown in hours, euros and working days (recovered hours divided by 8).
Why 46 working weeks?
It allows for holidays and leave. It is an assumption. If your team works more weeks, the real total is a little higher than the calculator shows.
Why only about half?
Because no workflow removes everything. Half is a deliberately cautious assumption. Your real figure depends on how your practice works, which is what a conversation about one workflow can clarify.
Does the calculator store what I enter?
No. The calculation runs in your browser and the result appears without an email address or login. If you choose to book a conversation, only the headline numbers and your optional time-sink choice travel with the link.
What counts as an hour lost?
Time spent on the four tasks above that does not need professional judgement: chasing documents, retyping data, building reports by hand and following up approvals.
Do I have to replace Xero, Dext or our practice software?
No. The estimate assumes you keep the tools you use and remove the manual steps between them.
What is the "biggest time-sink" question for?
It does not affect your result. It is only sent if you book a conversation, so that the first thing we discuss is the task that costs you most.
What happens in the free 30-minute fit call?
You bring one workflow and the number you calculated, and we talk through where the hours go and what could be connected.
07. Next step
Hot path: Bring one workflow and the number you just calculated. Book a free 30-minute fit call →
Soft path: Print your result or copy the link to share with a colleague. Nothing is stored, and no email is needed.
