Transparency
Every figure on these pages can be recalculated.
No averages across all heads. By role. With a deduction. With sources. If you consider other values correct, use them instead.
Live calculation
How much time sits with you?
Hours per week, 45 working weeks, 55 percent removable. The figure is an estimate. The Kurz-Check calculates with your own inputs.
Half office, half productive — the average of the two rates
540
admin hours / year
297
of which removable (55 %)
€8,600
calculated annual value
Administration is unevenly distributed
That is why we calculate by role.
| Role | Admin / week |
|---|---|
| Owner, management | 10 to 15 hours |
| Master craftsman, site or service manager | 7 to 11 hours |
| Foreman, team or crew leader | 4 to 8 hours |
| Office worker | 25 to 32 hours |
| Trade staff without leadership duties | 0.5 to 2 hours |
All sample calculations use the midpoint of the ranges. Origin: 88 projects since 2012 in which exactly these times were recorded — not a study.
Two parts of administrative work
What goes away
Capturing, typing up, matching, gathering, forwarding, following up, entering a second time. The larger part. It creates no value.
What remains
Deciding, coordinating, talking to customers, making professional judgements. The smaller part. Nobody should automate it either.
We calculate with 55 percent.
With ten hours of administration a week, four and a half remain — for the work that needs a person.
Two paths, different people
Path 1
The position you do not fill
Applies to the office worker. €30 full cost per hour. 30 × 1,550 annual hours ≈ €46,500 for a full-time position.
Path 2
More billable output
Applies to owners, master craftsmen, foremen. €70 per hour — the midpoint of 2026 charge-out rates. Only 40 percent of it counts as additional output, because not every free hour turns into revenue.
No double counting: different people. The same hour is never valued twice.
The calculator above offers a third option, “Both in the business”. It has no rate of its own; it is the average of these two: half administrative hours at €30, half productive hours at €70 with 40 percent conversion. That comes to €29 per hour removed.
Example: construction firm, ten people
1,600 hours. €21,150 plus €27,580.
| Role | Number | Admin/week | of which 55 % | Total/week |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Owner | 1 | 12.5 h | 6.9 h | 6.9 h |
| Master craftsman | 1 | 9.0 h | 5.0 h | 5.0 h |
| Foreman | 2 | 6.0 h | 3.3 h | 6.6 h |
| Office worker | 1 | 28.5 h | 15.7 h | 15.7 h |
| Trade staff | 5 | 1.25 h | 0.7 h | 3.4 h |
| Total | 10 | 37.6 h |
Over 45 working weeks: around 1,600 hours a year. Office worker 705 h × €30 = €21,150. Productive roles 985 h × 40 % × €70 = €27,580.
Liquidity on top
Invoicing three weeks earlier = €69,000 not sitting with the customer.
Tied-up capital = annual revenue ÷ 52 × weeks saved. Example: €1.2 million revenue, invoice three weeks earlier: 1,200,000 ÷ 52 × 3 = €69,230 freed up permanently. Interest benefit at 2.5 % ≈ €1,730 — the smaller part. What matters is that the money is there.
| Industry | Sample | Hours | Position | Additional output |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Construction and finishing | 10 staff | 1,600 | €21,000 | €27,500 |
| Engineering, wood, metal | 10 staff | 1,550 | €21,000 | €26,500 |
| Buildings and real estate | 15 staff | 2,000 | €39,000 | €22,500 |
| Care and health | 25 staff | 2,350 | €42,000 | €21,000 |
| Logistics and transport | 30 staff | 2,000 | €40,000 | €17,500 |
| Household-related services | 20 staff | 1,900 | €37,000 | €11,000 |
| Hairdressing and beauty* | 6 staff | 400 | – | €12,500 |
| Bakery and patisserie* | 12 staff | 1,700 | €21,000 | €29,000 |
| Restaurants and cafés* | 10 staff | 800 | – | €25,000 |
| Retail* | 5 staff | 400 | – | €12,000 |
* Newly added industries: the same model as above. The make-up of the sample business is assumed and is shown on the respective industry page. Not yet measured in client businesses.
This shows the saving, not the price. To calculate with your own figures, use the Kurz-Check.
Recalculate yourself
Four inputs are enough.
- Who does administrative tasks in your business? Count the people by role.
- Roughly how many hours per week? Better to estimate cautiously.
- Take 55 percent of that as removable.
- Value it: office staff at your full cost, productive roles at your charge-out rate — 40 percent of that.
If your result is clearly lower than in these examples, that is an honest result. Then LeanRoutine may not pay off for you, and I will tell you so in the call as well.
What these figures are not
Three caveats that belong with them.
Not a measurement in your business.
These are sample calculations based on experience. What actually adds up in your business is shown only by the Kurz-Check or the assessment.
Not a promise.
I do not guarantee any saving. What is promised is in the contract: set-up, maintenance and response times.
They will be replaced as soon as there is something better.
For every client, the cost of a routine is measured before and after. These values take the place of the estimates — even if they turn out lower.
Sources
Where the assumptions come from.
The sources are German-language pages.
- Charge-out rates in the skilled trades 2026 — Overview by trade and region. handwerker-kosmos.de
- Bureaucratic burden in the skilled trades — Handwerkskammer Dresden with the FH des Mittelstands: 102 bureaucratic obligations, around 596 working hours a year for businesses with five to 15 employees. To the study
- Share of working time spent on bureaucracy in the Mittelstand — KfW Research, Fokus No. 495, April 2025: around seven percent. To the analysis
- Share of bureaucracy in care — Asklepios study on job satisfaction, survey of 200 nursing staff: on average 42 percent of working time. To the study
- Payment terms and late invoicing — Survey on payment defaults in the skilled trades. handwerk-magazin.de
The figures from these sources lie in the same range as the assumptions here — some lower, some higher. The values for administrative time by role, by contrast, come from our own projects and are marked as such.