Over half of smaller business owners (55%) say their company’s growth is being held back by the amount of time they have to dedicate to business administration, according to research from the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), which also shows small companies spend an average of £3,600 on help and advice with tax compliance.
The study of over 1,600 small business owners found they spend over 33 hours every month on internal business administration, of which 15 hours was devoted to accounting. In addition, the average small business sees around 70 hours of employee time tied up in business admin.
Two-thirds of smaller businesses (67%) said the administrative burden is preventing them from focusing on their business’ primary purpose, while three-quarters of business owners (76%) spend more time than they would like on business compliance.
Dave Stallon, commercial director at FSB, said: ‘It is a common frustration amongst owners of smaller companies that they are unable to find the time to work on their real business activities, because they are too busy completing administrative tasks, however essential they are.
‘These businesses need expert support they can trust in order to minimise time dedicated to business administration. If they do this, they can maximise the time spent making their businesses bigger, better and more profitable.’
Nearly half of respondents to the survey (46%) said they would hire external advisors to help them with these tasks if they could afford to, but FSB says they are concerns over costs as its study found the average smaller business that outsources these services spends almost £14,000 a year doing so.
