Time spent on manual reporting: what it costs

Key takeaways

Time spent on manual reporting is the hours staff use collecting figures from different systems, pasting them into spreadsheets and formatting the result. In small businesses it usually falls to a manager. Many of the reports are not read. Cut the list first, then standardise, then hand over the assembly.

• 4 hours a week of a £45,000 manager on reports is about £5,500 a year.
• Ask of each report: what decision did it lead to last quarter?
• 1 page of 8 to 12 numbers serves most small businesses.
• Assembly can be handed over; interpretation stays with you.

What is manual reporting?

Manual reporting is producing regular business reports by hand: exporting data from several systems, combining it in a spreadsheet, checking it and formatting it for readers. It is distinct from analysis, which is deciding what the numbers mean and what to do.

• The hidden costs of doing everything in-house
• The cost of manual processes, and what to fix first

What does it cost?

It costs senior time. A manager on £45,000 costs about £29.98 per worked hour. Four hours a week assembling reports is about £5,500 a year, spent on copying and formatting. The same four hours spent acting on the numbers would be worth far more.

• Non-billable hours: how many is too many?

Which reports should you drop?

Drop any report that has not changed a decision. A quick test is to stop sending it and see who asks.

• Reports nobody opens.
• Reports that repeat figures available on a system dashboard.
• Reports with more than 12 numbers on the first page.
• Reports produced weekly for decisions made quarterly.

• BPO scorecard and KPIs

How do you reduce the effort?

Reduce the effort in three steps: fewer reports, fixed definitions and someone other than a manager doing the assembly.

• Agree one page of 8 to 12 measures.
• Write down exactly how each is calculated.
• Use built-in dashboards where they exist.
• Hand the export and assembly steps to an administrator or managed team.
• Keep a 20-minute weekly review of what the numbers show.

• Running a business on spreadsheets: when it breaks

When is manual reporting acceptable?

Manual reporting is acceptable for one-off analysis and for a new measure you are still testing. Automating or delegating a report whose design will change next month wastes effort. Fix it once it has settled.

Where does the time go?

Very little reporting time is spent thinking. Most goes on mechanics.

• Exporting data from each system.
• Cleaning and reformatting it so the files match.
• Copying figures into the master spreadsheet.
• Checking totals that do not agree.
• Formatting charts and tables.
• Chasing colleagues for their numbers.

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Why do reports multiply?

Reports multiply because they are easy to request and awkward to cancel. Someone asks a question once, a report is built to answer it, and it carries on every week after the question has gone away. New managers add their own. Nobody removes the old ones, in case someone still uses them. After a few years, the reporting pack contains more history than information.

What does a good one-page report contain?

A good report fits on one page and can be read in five minutes. It shows each measure against a target or the same period last year, marks anything outside an agreed range, and says in a sentence what has changed. If a number never triggers a question or an action, it does not belong on the page.

Who else is building reports by hand?

Managers are not the only ones. Salespeople compile pipeline updates, and administrators assemble figures for the accountant. Adding up reporting time across the whole team often doubles the first estimate.

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What mistakes do businesses make with reporting?

The common mistakes are measuring what is easy instead of what matters, changing definitions from month to month so trends mean nothing, and producing reports later than the decisions they are meant to inform. A weekly figure that arrives the following Thursday is history.

What should you do this month?

List every regular report, the hours it takes and who reads it. Pause the two you suspect nobody uses and see whether anyone asks. For the rest, write down how each number is calculated, so that the assembly can be done by someone other than a manager. Most businesses recover half their reporting time from those three steps alone.

What does this look like in practice?

A pattern worth testing on your own reporting: ask what decision the last monthly report led to. In a great many businesses, nobody can name one. The report took a manager most of a day.

• See client work
• BPO Solutions for UK businesses

Reporting checklist

Apply this to your current reports.

• List every regular report and who produces it.
• Record the hours each takes.
• Note the last decision each one informed.
• Drop or merge the ones with no answer.
• Define the remaining measures.
• Move assembly away from managers.

• The hidden cost audit: score your business in an hour

Next step

Send us your report list and who builds each one. We will suggest what to drop and what a managed team could assemble in a 30-minute call.