The Time Leak Calculator: How much is inefficiency costing your firm?

Even when you run a successful accounting firm, there’s always a nagging feeling that there’s not enough hours in a day. That’s because of time leakage. 

Deadlines slip, tax season becomes busy season, and MTD feels more like a threat than the chance to work closely with clients. 

Unfortunately, time leakage isn’t obvious. It hides under the surface, tripping up the best accountants in the most successful firms. 

And, because time is money, profits are lower. 

Ready to find out how much time your firm is leaking? Skip straight to the calculator.

How time leakage happens in accounting firms 

Every accounting practice leaks time. It’s not because anyone is being lazy or doesn’t care enough – you believe in your staff and with good reason. 

Time leakage happens in the gaps between main tasks. It’s the email chain nobody logged. The onboarding admin that took twice as long as expected. The client data re-entered across three different systems because your software doesn’t sync. 

Every week, these things cost money because of wasted time. 

It might be a price you’re willing to pay or it might not be. The problem is that time leakage doesn’t get measured, so it’s hard to see if the loss is acceptable. 

Why is it so easy for us, as accountants, not to think about this time leakage? Because it has become business as usual. 

When you talk to accountants about time recording, you hear the same thing: there’s rarely any consistency. One fee earner logs every email and phone call. Another doesn’t. One partner records a five-minute credit check on a timesheet; someone across the office writes it off without a second thought. There’s often no rulebook that clearly defines what counts – and what’s justifiably chargeable in one situation might not be in another.  

So, everything is lost in the noise, and the time leakage continues. It does so week after week.  

Thankfully, we’ve got some good news for you: we’ve built something to help remedy that. 

Enter the IRIS Time Leak Calculator: See where your money is disappearing 

The IRIS Time Leak Calculator helps you map the hours lost across every client’s journey with your firm. It puts a number on what leakage is costing your practice. 

So, how does it work? You begin by entering three numbers at the top. These are for how many fee earners you have, your average charge-out rate, and your expected billable hours. 

From there, you explore six categories of practice activity:  

• Onboarding 
• Service delivery 
• Bookkeeping 
• Compliance 
• Advisory 
• Reporting  

Within each category, there are tasks where time disappears. Examples include preparing letters of engagement, AML checks, chasing paperwork, and re-entering client records. For each of these tasks there is a slider that lets you estimate how much time is slipping away per fee earner, per week. 

The calculator updates with live figures: a projected annual cost of your time leakage.  

We will warn you that the result might come as a shock.  

The cost of doing nothing 

As we developed our time leakage calculator, we made sure we took it for a good test run.  

We were conservative in our inputs. Every single task was set to just half an hour of leakage per person per week. The rate? £150 an hour, which is a mid-range figure across the country – and, if anything, a lower rate in the south. 

The result was an eye-watering £766,000 of leaked time per year. 

How should you fill in the time leak calculator? 

The right mindset is to be brutally honest; don’t overthink your answers. 

Nobody is judging. Remember that, for the most part, the industry simply doesn’t record this data. What our calculator needs is your best honest guess, answered as quickly as you can, without talking yourself out of your instincts. 

Whatever you put in, prepare yourself for the output.  

What to do once you’ve seen the number 

First: if it’s not good, don’t panic. Panic won’t recover a penny of lost time. Instead, think about where to go from here. 

There are broadly three places to land. You might look again at the number and decide it’s within acceptable limits. That’s totally valid, and at least now you know. 

You might decide there are one or two categories worth improving.  

Or you might decide it’s time to do something more significant about the way your practice captures and records time. We can help with that. 

The most useful first step, whichever direction you’re heading, is to follow up with a live recording exercise. Ask one or two fee earners to log lost, unchargeable time for a week. This is just to help provide data. Compare that week to the initial estimate, then see if you need to speak to one of our advisors. 

So, it’s time to get started. Don’t hesitate. Take a deep breath, go with your instinct, and see what the time leak calculator can tell you. 

Time Leak Calculator

Map the hours lost across your client journey — and see what it’s costing your practice

Total fee earners

Avg. charge-out rate (£/hr)

Billable hrs/week (per person)

Calculate results