Every week, you spend hours on work that doesn't pay. Quoting jobs, chasing invoices, scheduling callouts, ordering materials, replying to enquiries at 9pm. It all adds up.
Most tradespeople know this work exists, but few have actually calculated what it costs them. Let's fix that.
The Hidden Math
Take a simple example: you're an electrician or plumber billing $120/hour for on-site work. But you're spending 2 hours a day on unpaid admin.
- 10 hours/week lost to admin you don't get paid for
- 40 hours/month that could be spent on billable jobs
- At $120/hour, that's $4,800/month in lost earnings
- Over a year: $57,600 you're leaving on the table
And that's conservative. Most operators we talk to are losing even more when you count evenings spent doing paperwork, weekends quoting jobs, and the mental load of keeping everything in your head.
It Gets Worse as You Grow
Here's what most operators miss: admin scales with your business. More clients means more invoices to chase. More jobs means more quotes to write. Hire a second tradie and you're now coordinating two schedules instead of one.
This is why so many trades businesses hit a wall. You're flat out but not making more money. Hiring an office person just adds another wage to cover.
The Alternative
Automation doesn't scale the same way. A system that sends your invoices, follows up on quotes, and books callouts handles the same work whether you have 10 clients or 100. The cost stays the same.
That's how you increase the money you take home per job, not by working longer hours, but by cutting the unpaid work that eats into every day.
How to Calculate Your Actual Cost
- List every task you do each week that isn't billable work
- Estimate the hours you spend on each one
- Multiply by your hourly rate — that's what you could be earning instead
- Add the cost of mistakes — a missed quote follow-up that loses a $5,000 job, a late invoice that doesn't get paid for 90 days
- Project over 12 months — this is what doing everything yourself is really costing you
Most tradespeople we talk to are shocked by the number. It's almost always higher than they expected.