What we usually find in an accountancy practice
Five findings that turn up in practice after practice, and roughly what each one costs a week.
Accountancy work is high volume, repetitive and deadline driven. That makes it ideal for good systems, and it means small inefficiencies get multiplied across the whole client book.
1. Chasing records
Usually the biggest block of recoverable time, often 4 to 8 hours a week and more near deadlines. The fix isn't chasing harder. It's structure: clear requests, reminders that send themselves, and one place clients send things to.
2. Typing client details more than once
The same client details live in practice software, a spreadsheet and email. That's typically 2 to 5 hours a week, plus the cost of mistakes when the copies disagree, which nobody ever measures.
3. Review as a bottleneck
Work queues up behind one or two reviewers and jobs wait for days. Consistent preparation helps, and so does separating the work that genuinely needs senior sign-off from the work that doesn't.
4. You can't see where a job is without asking
Checking progress across systems and colleagues commonly costs 3 to 6 hours a week, and much of it lands on the most expensive people in the practice. A shared, live view of job status removes most of it.
5. Onboarding rebuilt every time
The steps are the same for every new client, but they're put together by hand each time. That's 1 to 3 hours per client, and most of it comes back with a set sequence and good templates.
What it adds up to
For a practice of six to ten people, these five commonly add up to 12 to 20 hours a week. Around half of that is realistically recoverable, and a lot of it costs nothing beyond deciding to change how things are done.