Free tool · Owner time audit
Owner time audit: where your week goes, and what to hand over first.
Put a typical week in. The audit shows how many of your hours should belong to someone else, what those hours are worth, and the first three things to hand over in the next 30 days.
Strictly private. The figures you type stay on your device. They are never sent to us or kept on our servers. The only details we hold are your name and email.
1. What you want the business to pay you
2. A typical week
Hours a week on each, and whether someone else could do it. Be honest; the three-week test will be.
| What you spend the week on | Hours | Could someone else do it? |
|---|---|---|
| Doing the work for customers The job the business sells: on site, on the tools, in the kitchen, at the desk. | ||
| Sales, quoting and customer calls New enquiries, quotes, follow-ups, the customers who only want you. | ||
| Answering the team’s questions “Have you got a minute?” Decisions that queue at your desk. | ||
| Firefighting Complaints, breakdowns, the thing that went wrong this morning. | ||
| Admin, invoicing and chasing payment Quotes into invoices, chasing debtors, suppliers, paperwork. | ||
| Finance and the numbers Cash flow, management accounts, the bank, the accountant. | ||
| Marketing and social media Posts, website, the newsletter, the ads. | ||
| Strategy, planning and hiring Where the business is going, who you need, the big decisions. |
Hours a week
0
In the business
Should belong to someone else
0
Hours a week
Worth, a year
£0
At what you want to be paid
Only you
0
Hours a week on the owner’s job
Fill in your week to see what should be handed over.
Your first 30 days
Hand over the “now” hours first, largest first. Then build the process or make the hire for the rest. The order matters more than the speed.
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How it works
Why a time audit, not a time-management tip
Most owners don’t have a time-management problem. They have an ownership problem: the business pays them to decide where it’s going and then fills their week with work it could pay someone else a lot less to do. A tip gets you twenty minutes back. An audit tells you which forty hours shouldn’t be yours.
So the audit asks two questions about every hour: how many, and could someone else do it? The hours marked “hand over now” need nobody new, only the decision to stop. The hours marked “with a process or a hire” are the real prize, and they’re what a management team is for. The hours marked “only me” are the job you ACTUALLY own: strategy, the numbers, the people decisions.
The three-week test
“Phone off, three weeks. What’s there for you when you get back? Is it a functioning business, or does it all pause? That pause is the diagnosis, and it’s the constraint you need to work on next.”
Dr Lewis Haydon, Mentor Business Podcast
If you can’t take the three weeks yet, the audit is the paper version. The categories with the most “only me” hours are the ones that would pause.
What the first 30 days look like
- Week one: stop answering. The questions you’re asked that someone else could decide. Agree who decides, write it down, and when the question comes to you anyway, send it back. That alone is usually three to five hours a week.
- Week two: move the admin. Invoicing, chasing, suppliers, the inbox. Someone already on the payroll can do most of it with a one-page process.
- Week three: one number each. Every area gets a person and a number on a weekly dashboard: red, amber, green. You check the dashboard, not the people.
- Week four: decide the hire. The “with a process or a hire” hours tell you who the business needs next, and the audit tells you what that hire is worth: the hours times what your time should be paid.
That’s the first month of how I work with owners: a planning day, the dashboard, then the handover in order. The longer version is in how to build a high-performing team, and the money side in how to pay yourself as a business owner.
Questions people ask
Do you keep my figures?
No. The sums run on your own device: the figures you type are never sent to us or kept on our servers, and they stay strictly private. To see your result you enter your name and email, and those are the only details we hold.
What is a time audit for a business owner?
A week of your hours sorted into what the business pays you to do (strategy, numbers, the big decisions) and what it is paying you to do instead (the work, the questions, the firefighting). The point is not to work less for its own sake. It is to find the hours that should belong to someone else, put a number on them, and hand them over in an order.
How much time can an owner realistically get back in 30 days?
In the first month, the hours that need nobody new: the questions you answer that the team could decide, the admin that could sit with someone already on the payroll, the meetings that could stop. Three to five hours a week is a normal first month. The hours that need a process, a hire or a manager take longer, and they are where the bigger numbers are.
What is the three-week test?
Switch your phone off for three weeks. What is there for you when you get back? If it is a functioning business, it grows without you. If decisions paused, excuses piled up and “we were waiting for you” is the answer, that pause is the diagnosis, and it tells you what to work on next.
What should an owner stop doing first?
The hours marked “could hand over now”, largest first. They cost the least to move and prove to the team that decisions are allowed. Then the “needs a process or a hire” hours, which are usually the biggest block and where a management team starts to pay for itself.
Why does this matter for the value of the business?
A business that needs its owner for the work, the sales or the decisions is worth less to a buyer, who will pay a lower multiple, defer part of the price, or tie the owner in for years. Every hour you hand over is a step from owning a job to owning an asset.
Built by Dr Lewis Haydon, a business coach and mentor in Birmingham, UK, who owns and invests in businesses and runs them through managing directors, not through his phone. Related: the business valuation calculator shows what a business that grows without you is worth.
Next step
More hours that shouldn’t be yours than you expected?
Bring your audit to a 30-minute virtual coffee and leave with the order to hand them over in.
Book a virtual coffee