The Owner's Hour: Time Audit & Delegation Calculator

Every owner knows their billable rate. Almost none knows what their own hour is worth: what the business pays you, divided by the hours you actually work. Until you know that number, every "should I just do it myself?" decision is a guess — and the guess is usually yes, which is why you work sixty hours.

How it works

Enter three numbers about yourself, then split your week across eleven categories — production, selling, admin, chasing payments, errands, scheduling, marketing, firefighting and the rest — with the realistic hourly cost of the person who could take each one over.

The workbook then does the arithmetic delegation advice never does:

• What your hour is worth, held against every category of your week
• A verdict per row: BUY IT BACK (costs less than your hour), HIRE FOR IT (a role, not an errand), FIX THE PROCESS (firefighting isn't delegated, it's engineered away), or KEEP (selling, pricing, hiring — the owner's actual job)
• The buy-back package: hours freed per year, what buying them costs, and what they return if redeployed into selling — priced at your revenue-per-selling-hour and your margin, not a guru's
• How to size the first hire from the hours, and the four reasons owners take the work back — with the counter to each

In the sample week, 16 hours cost $16,072 a year to buy and return up to $63,504 redeployed — $3.95 per delegated dollar. Your numbers will differ. That is the point of typing them in.

Built for

Owner-operators working 50+ hour weeks · trades and service businesses · solopreneurs deciding on their first VA or part-timer · anyone whose growth plan is currently "work harder."

What you get

One .xlsx file, four tabs, instant download. Excel, Google Sheets, Apple Numbers, LibreOffice. No macros, no subscription. Every assumption visible and editable.