Ask a founder what their back office costs and they'll usually give you a figure for software subscriptions and perhaps an accountant's year-end fee. What they almost never include is their own time — which, for most early-stage companies, is the biggest back-office cost of all.
Admin feels free because you're not paying for it
When a founder does the invoicing, runs payroll or chases a supplier, no invoice arrives for that work. It feels free. But the hours are real, and they come out of the one resource a start-up can't buy more of: the founders' attention.
Put a number on it
A simple exercise: estimate the hours you spend each week on admin — bookkeeping, invoicing, expenses, payroll, supplier set-up, recruitment scheduling, answering routine customer queries. Most founders who do this honestly land on a number higher than they expected.
Then value those hours. Not at the cost of an administrator, but at what an hour of your time is worth to the business: what it would generate if spent on selling, product, fundraising or hiring. As an illustration, five hours a week valued at £100 an hour is £500 a week — around £26,000 a year — before counting any of the mistakes that come from doing admin in the gaps.
The hidden costs on top
The time cost is only part of it. Admin done in a rush, late in the evening, tends to produce its own costs: invoices sent late, so cash comes in late; supplier payments missed; expenses left unreconciled; payroll errors that take longer to fix than to prevent. And the decisions you make on incomplete numbers — on runway, hiring or pricing — can cost far more than the admin itself.
The context-switching tax
There's also a less visible cost. Switching from a sales conversation to a VAT query to a product decision fragments the day. An hour of admin rarely costs just an hour; it breaks up the deep, focused time that the founder-only work needs.
What changes when you delegate it
Delegating the back office doesn't just return the hours. It gives you numbers that are up to date, payments that go out on time and a process that doesn't depend on you remembering to do it. The founders get to spend their time on the things only they can do.
How we help start-ups
Our fixed-price start-up packages take the back office off the founders' plate — getting paid, paying suppliers and staff, monthly numbers, employee admin, hiring and compliance deadlines, run by specialists with automation and AI doing the repetitive work. You pay a known monthly price sized to your business and step up as you grow, without hiring in-house before you're ready.